


A Victim to Charm

by all_the_kings_ham



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean/Lucifer - Freeform, Dogs, Ducifer - Freeform, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Good Parents John Winchester and Mary Winchester, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lucifer & Dean Winchester Friendship, M/M, Over Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Suicide mention, a lot of buddy buddy moments, a lot of teen rebelion, but we never get graphic, dean and lucifer are the worst friends, despite the well meaning research, just as a promise that there will be good dogs, not as a warning, not graphic, oh boy here we go with another one, people who hit kids are monsters, sam and jess wedding, seriously I was an incredibly boring teenager, so some inaccuracies are bound to happen, teenage angst, teenage boys kissing, teens doing drugs, teens drinking, written by someone who never once rebelled as a teen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 76,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25342096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_the_kings_ham/pseuds/all_the_kings_ham
Summary: While attending his brother's wedding, Dean is forced to face someone from his past that he'd tried very hard to forget.
Relationships: Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Lucifer/Dean Winchester
Comments: 44
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has a lot of ups and downs, but settles somewhere soft and hopeful.
> 
> Right now the world is scary and awful, and this fic was written while I was pulling myself out of some deep and overwhelming sad, so hopefully for anyone reading this it can provide the same bit of distraction and optimism for you that it did for me. 
> 
> since this story is actually (practically) complete, I'm planning to update it every other day or so

\----  **Summer, 2020** \----

“Stop glaring at the chair, Dean.”

“Screw that chair and screw the guy who should be sitting there.”

Lisa took a deep, slow breath, less for herself and more for Dean. Those calming yoga breaths that she’d been doing with him on the plane yesterday. It hadn’t helped him then and it wasn’t going to help him now. 

“Maybe he won’t even show up and you’re stressing yourself out for nothing.”

“He’d have to be some grade A son of a bitch to not come to his own sister’s wedding,” Dean grumbled, keeping his voice low as he looked around the table to make sure that no one was listening to them. Only half the people sitting here were familiar to Dean. Introductions for everyone had been made an hour ago but none of the new names had stuck. It wouldn’t matter. In two days he’d be back up north and never have to see these strangers again.

They were all halfway done with their meal, the practice dinner (whatever the hell that was), and Jess’ brother had never shown. The empty chair to the side of the bride-to-be a constant reminder of the missing man.

Dean was grateful, but apprehensive that at any moment the boy he’d grown up next door to would waltz in here and give him hell.

Lisa rested a hand over his for a moment, a grounding sort of touch that he hadn’t known he needed right then―but she’d always been able to read him better than she had any right to. They’d been friends since he’d moved to North Dakota to finish high school. They’d both been the new kids, big fish in a small pond, and it had made them fast friends by default. They’d even been roommates after graduation, and he’d been best man at her wedding―a wedding where he’d been the one to set the bride and groom up on a blind date years before.

It seemed only fair that she’d accompany him to his brother’s wedding now. As a fake date and a very real bodyguard to keep him safe from his own stupidity if nothing else. 

She took her job a little too seriously. “Look, all that nonsense between you two? You guys were kids. So if he  _ does  _ show his stupid face, and he hasn’t had the decency to grown up since you left, I will personally beat his sorry ass for you.”

“It’s going to be enough trouble if he shows up, without my date trying to beat him to death with a high heel shoe,” he muttered into his glass, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as his friend snorted softly.

“Not to  _ death _ ,” she smiled into her white wine, “just until he apologizes to you for everything he’s ever done.”

That would be one hell of an apology, and Dean nearly laughed at the thought of it. 

He’d met Nick nearly thirty years ago. Practically a whole lifetime of awful that _ one of them _ needed to say sorry for―and Dean wouldn’t be the first one to try.

Some memories had turned to nothing more than a blur of feelings, hazy after the passage of so much time. Some stayed crystalline clear even years after the fact. He’d hated the boy next door since the day the jerk moved in. 

“Did I tell you that the son of a bitch turned down the cookies my mom made for his family when they moved in?”

Lisa smiled and shook her head, even though Dean was positive that he’d angrily told the story to her multiple times. 

“Mom makes these awesome cookies for the new neighbors,” he remembered that morning perfectly, all the built-up excitement of making friends with the other little boy who’d just moved in, “these bar cookies she does, I’ve made ‘em for you a couple times, best freaking cookies ever, and that five-year-old jerk with these glasses that make him look like a bug says ‘ _ I only eat circle cookies’  _ like he’s too good to eat a goddamn rectangle.”

Still smiling, Lisa squeezed his knee. “I’m sure there’s more to it, but you do realize you sound like the crazy one when you start getting all mad about these fights that you two had when you were kids.”

“Who cares what shape a cookie is?” Dean demanded, ignoring the funny looks he got from the people sitting across from them. “Someone makes you a cookie, you say thank you and you eat the fucking cookie.”

“Why don’t we get you a refill,” Lisa tried and failed to keep a straight face as she gestured to a waiter and then pointed at their empty glasses. “It couldn’t have been all bad though, right? I mean, you like his sister, enough that you’re happy she and Sam are getting married. There’s not any crossover between her and her big brother?”

He considered begrudgingly admitting that they both had freckles, but Nick’s weren't anywhere you could see if he was fully dressed, and Dean would prefer not to revisit any of those memories tonight if he could help it.

“No. He’s always been a condescending asshole. I remember one time we rented Anaconda, my first rated R movie, and he won’t even watch it with us because ‘he’s read books about snakes and it’s unrealistic that one could ever get that big’.”

Lisa’s shoulders shook as she kept on trying not to laugh. “He’s not wrong?”

“We were ten,” Dean’s jaw was starting to hurt from how hard he was grinding his teeth. “What kind of ten-year-old reads books about anacondas?”

His friend only shook her head, offering a long-suffering smile to the waiter who set down fresh glasses of wine in front of them both. 

Dean rolled the cold drink between his hands before tossing back half of it. He knew he’d whined over these sorts of stories to his friend for years and he knew that Lisa couldn’t take his hatred seriously. She hadn’t grown up out here with them so all the little stories of his and Nick’s fighting over the years probably just sounded more like petty little kid arguments than anything serious. But she also hadn’t been there for the big fights and the broken bones, and Dean had never quite gotten up the guts to tell her about them. 

He much preferred not to relive those couple times that he’d nearly gotten his ass kicked by the nerdy kid next door with the glasses and a hatred of rectangle cookies. 

“You know, things are winding down here, I might just turn in early,” Lisa rested her head against his shoulder for a moment, whispering, “as your fake date I give you permission to go blow off some steam with one of the bridesmaids if you think that might help.”

“You’re the best friend a guy could ask for,” he kissed the top of her head, smiling at how her hair tickled his nose. 

“I really am,” she smiled up at him, then her eyes flicked over his shoulder and her smile bloomed into a grin. “I’ve got to say though, if it doesn’t work out with any of the bridesmaids please consider that tall drink of water hugging your soon to be sister in law, because I’d love to hear about him tomorrow morning, maybe even see some pictures,” she trailed off, biting her lip and happily lost in thought. 

Dean chuckled, looking down the table, his gaze skimming over the mess of strangers that all knew the bride and groom one way or another. A lot of school friends, if Dean was remembering all those introductions as the beginning of dinner, and yeah, he’d made a mental note of a few that he wouldn’t mind getting to know a bit better. 

None of those fine looking college coeds were hugging his sister in law however. This was someone new. Someone just as tall as Sam as the man in a military uniform pulled away from the bride to catch the goom up in what looked to be a crushing hug. Sam was laughing, all dimples and bright eyes as he looked past the man he was hugging to find Dean, his smile suddenly going tight and forced and very uneasy. 

It was a very unexpected expression and Dean frowned in return, not understanding in the least what the look was for. 

But then the man stopped hugging Sam, holding him out at arm’s length and smiling and saying something that was too quiet to hear from way back where Dean was sitting. The guy had an oddly familiar face, but the hammering in Dean’s chest seemed to recognize that awful smile and that crooked nose long before his brain could catch up. 

“Dean?” Lisa prodded him. “You ok there?”

He shook his head, scrambling to hold on to that petty hatred he’d had only moments before, but finding instead only memories of late nights, and soft whispers, and the way that Nick’s mouth had felt on the back of his neck, all sorts of things that he’d spent the last decade of his life trying to forget.

“Oh, shit,” Lisa whispered, slapping Dean’s leg repeatedly. “ _ That’s _ him?”

An awful sound, almost like a laugh, clawed its way out of Dean’s throat. 

Lisa should have been sympathetic, instead she was grinning ear to ear, asking, “What happened to him being a nerdy little kid with glasses?”

“He grew up,” Dean said in a hollow voice, unable to keep himself from thinking back to when he was only sixteen and found what felt like a complete stranger hiding in the backyard treehouse.

  
  
  


\----  **Spring Break, 2004** \----

Dean didn’t want to put his clothes away. He hadn’t even realized he owned so many clothes until he had to pack them up to come home. Two suitcases worth of junk that could wait a couple of days to be unpacked. His old room hadn’t really changed in the last couple years, though Sam had sworn they’d been using it for holiday storage and mom’s exercise bike that she never used, right up until two days ago when all the odds and ends had been relocated to the garage to make space for the return of their prodigal son. 

Nostalgia was hitting hard as he thumbed through his box of records he hadn’t seen in years, and he grinned at the band posters that had faded in the sunlight. He’d always been a night owl and kept the curtains drawn, but someone must have opened them at some point. The room was very nearly exactly how he’d left it and that was both good and bad. 

He knelt on the bed and reached out to close the curtains so he’d stand a chance of actually sleeping in tomorrow morning. A light out in the backyard caught his eye though and he paused, feeling a slow grin creep in. Someone was out in the treehouse, and that someone was probably Sam, who supposedly had gone off to bed nearly an hour ago. 

Back at his uncle’s place, Dean hadn’t really had much reason to sneak out. The old man let him come and go as he wanted as long as the police didn’t have to bring him home, and he was able to get to school on time each morning. 

Admittedly, he was a little rusty at this whole thing, and it didn’t help that he was at least a whole foot taller than last time he’d had to unfold himself through the open window and climb down off the porch overhang. He managed though, grinning as he sprinted over the cold grass, to the base of the sturdy old oak. Dean remembered the treehouse being bigger, or maybe he was just taller. It was hard to tell.

Halfway up the ladder he paused, exhaling sharply as the sharp scent of pot hit him. With a lecture for his twelve-year-old brother ready to go, Dean climbed the last few rungs and pulled himself up through the hole in the treehouse floor. 

“Look here, you little shit. You’re not even in high school yet. Dad’s going to kill you if…” he trailed off, frowning across the gap at someone who definitely was not Sammy. Dean narrowed his eyes at the unexpected blond guy who was squinting back at him while a joint dangled from the edge of his mouth in an almost forgotten way.

He looked around Dean’s age, though his shoulders were far more narrow and his jaw only had the promised beginnings of sharp edges. The guy had pale, almost colorless eyes in the glow of the strand of Christmas lights that had been strung up around the inside of the treehouse. There was dried blood around his nose and smeared over his lower lip and chin, more dark spots over the front of his button-down shirt and loose tie. 

Dean’s brain felt like a computer trying to connect to dial-up, all white noise mixed with uncomfortably sharp sounds as he struggled to place those naggingly familiar features.

“Aw hell,” the stranger sighed out a stream of smoke with the breath he’d been holding. “It’s you.”

“Holy shit,” recognition was like a slap across the face, Dean knew the voice even though it was older and no longer matched the face he was looking at. “They finally kick you out of that rich bitch private school of yours,  _ Luci _ ?” He dragged out the hated nickname, grinning when he saw the kid from next door wince.

“Time off for good behavior,” Nick said before taking another slow drag, holding his breath for a long moment before asking tightly, “When’d they let you out of juvie?” 

Dean snickered, folding his legs under himself and shaking his head. He hadn’t been sent to juvenile hall, but he wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what people around here had said in his absence. This was a small town and they did like their gossip. “I’ve been staying with my uncle up in North Dakota.”

Nick laughed sharply, which probably had more to do with what he was smoking than any real humor in what Dean had said. “Perks of your dad being a cop, right? You  _ should've _ been locked up, but instead, they send you away on vacation. Sure. Makes sense to me.” 

There were actually zero perks of being the son of Sargent John Winchester. 

Not a single one. 

“Looks like your nose healed up kind of crooked,” Dean nodded to the old injury he’d given the other guy before reaching over to steal the joint, amused by the delayed expressions of surprise and irritation that crossed Nick’s face. 

He grinned before taking a slow puff, ignoring the coppery taste that clung to the tip of his tongue.

Nick made a face as he touched the uneven bridge of his nose. Never willing to take and insult without offering one back he asked, “How’s your arm? Must have been hard to jerk off with the whole thing in a cast.”

“Nah, man. I just had your mom lend me a hand,” Dean grinned and tried hard not to self consciously touch the scars at his wrist and elbow where the surgical pins had gone. 

Two years back they’d sent each other to the hospital; not for the first time, and knowing their track record it wouldn’t be the last either. 

“Wow, I didn’t miss you.” Nick reached out towards the joint that Dean had stolen, expectant. 

“Same,” Dean took another long drag and closed his eyes, savoring that relaxed feeling slowly spreading through him. Begrudgingly, he passed the joint back, frowning at how their fingers touched during the short exchange. “I’d say I need to kick your ass for you sneaking up here, but it looks like someone already beat me to it.” 

One corner of Nick’s mouth curled up in a way that almost resembled a smile. He took a long drag and let his head fall back to rest against the wall. 

He’d grown a lot over the last two years. Back when they were kids his messy blond head had barely reached Dean’s shoulder, and now, even though they were both sitting it looked like the jerk might actually have outgrown Dean. Uncomfortably lanky, all elbows and knees and hollow bruises under his eyes. 

“You just get back from a funeral?” He asked. It was a Tuesday night and there was no reason he could come up with for the other guy wearing a tie.

“Bible study,” Nick explained with a puff of smoke. 

“Yeah, I hear those things can get out of hand real fast.” Dean frowned long and hard at what would be some spectacular bruising by morning. “Not for nothing, but my dad’s gonna’ be pissed if he catches you out here smoking.”

He hummed a low, soft breath as a proper smile crept over his bloodied lip for the first time. “Not afraid of your dad.”

That was something that had always pissed Dean off about his neighbor. The whole world had sense enough to be afraid of his dad―everyone except Nick fuckin- _ ‘Luci’ _ Williams. The only thing that seemed to ever scare the other boy was moths.

Annoyed, Dean reached out between the two of them, trying to snatch the joint from Nick’s lips and coming up short. “Come on, if you’re going to creep up here you’ve got to pay the tax. Share.”

Nick snorted, holding the little rolled bit of paper up above his head and even further from Dean’s reach. “Get your own, freeloader.”

“It’s my treehouse,” Dean reminded, his arm still outstretched, waiting.

With an irritated sigh of surrender Nick passed the joint back, making a point to flip Dean off with both hands before leaning back against the wall. “Next time bring your own.”

Dean pulled a long drag, holding his breath and feeling the tension between his shoulders ease. “Come on,  _ Luci _ , think of it like rent. You want me to let you smoke in my treehouse then you’re gonna have to share.”

“Keep calling me that and I’m going to throw you out of your precious treehouse.”

Dean grinned, loving how easy it was to still get under the other guy’s skin. It was nice to know that after all this time he hadn’t lost his touch. 

  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \----

“I want to go,” Dean said, even though he hadn’t made a move to get out of his chair, not wanting to somehow draw the attention of the man on the other side of the room. Not that he was afraid. He just knew that he’d had one glass of wine too many and it was currently in everyone’s best interest if he left quickly and quietly before anything bad could happen. 

“Alright,” Lisa was watching him with a worried expression. “Just let me finish my drink… and you might want to say goodnight to your brother before taking off.”

“I’ll send him a text when we get back to the hotel.”

“Your brother is getting married in two days, you’re not going into hiding and then sending him a text.”

“Why the hell not?”

She gave him a long, stony look. 

“If I have to go over there and get in arm’s reach of that jackass there’s going to be fists thrown,” Dean explained, picking up Lisa’s glass and finishing it off for her. “I owe it to my brother not to start a brawl at his fancy dinner.”

“Then I’ll go tell him goodnight from both of us and you can wait for me outside like a fucking coward.”

Dean put a hand to his chest, doing his best to look incredibly offended. 

“Besides, I’ve been wanting to meet this guy for years now. Got to see if he lives up to all the hype.”

Lisa was supposed to be there to keep an eye on Dean and provide some kind of social safety net. She wasn’t supposed to go looking for trouble. And she was obviously looking for trouble as she stood, straightened her dress in a way that provided the best view of her breasts, and made her way to the head of the table. She moved too fast for Dean to stop her and explain that she was wasting a good dress because she could walk up there naked and it still wouldn’t make a difference to Nick.

The boy next door didn’t exactly measure up to whatever Dean’s mind told him ‘gay’ was supposed to look like, and despite some fairly obvious evidence it had still taken Dean a very long time to realize that Nick wasn’t interested in girls like most boys their age were supposed to be.

Being raised in a small town with church every Sunday and heavy weight put on the importance of family values and community, ‘gay’ wasn’t even something that Dean released was a real thing until he’d been sent out of state for his two years of probation. He’d heard the word thrown around as an insult when he was a kid, but it had always seemed like calling someone a jackass, or saying they had shit for brains. The word didn’t actually mean what it sounded like. Or at least that’s just what he’d always assumed up until he’d met his Uncle’s old fishing buddy Rufus and Rufus’ husband Ian. 

Coming back home to Kansas at sixteen, a little wiser to the ways of the world (but only a  _ little _ ), he still had a hard time putting all those clues together to figure Nick out.

  
  
  


\----  **Late April, 2004** \----

It was a Friday night, which meant that John and Mary had gone out for a much-needed date night away from their boys, leaving Dean to keep an eye on Sammy, who was twelve and far too old to need a babysitter. So when Sam asked if Jess could come over and watch a movie all Dean could think of was ‘perfect, the kids can take care of themselves’ and he wouldn’t have to do a thing. 

Unlike her asshole of an older brother, the little girl who lived next door was actually very sweet. Her birthday was three days before Sam’s and the two of them had basically been best friends since birth. They were in middle school now, only weeks away from turning twelve, and in the short time he’d been back home Dean had noticed a definite shift in the kid’s relationship. They sat a lot closer to each other nowadays and did an awful lot of smiling without ever saying anything. 

Dean was happy to have the kid over for a movie and popcorn, because he honestly loved watching his baby brother falling in love. 

Unfortunately, with Jess came Jess’ big brother―who hadn’t been invited and was actually unwelcome in the house as far as Dean was concerned. 

“Who invited you, creep?” He asked, blocking the doorway with his arm, even though Jess easily slipped past and ran off to the kitchen where Sam was microwaving some popcorn. 

Lu watched over Dean’s shoulder, his eyes following his sister’s erratic footsteps. “Mom wanted me to keep an eye on Jess.”

“I got it taken care of,” Dean said without moving an inch to make room.

“Yeah, well, Mom doesn’t exactly trust the kid who stole and wrecked her car, so I’ve got to be here.”

Dean wanted to slam the door in Luci’s face and see if he couldn’t somehow add another bruise to the guy’s chin in the process. He felt his hand tightening on the door handle, but before he could go through with it, Lu stepped forward and braced his shoe against the edge of the door.

“Also, I thought it’s been a little while and maybe I owed you some rent.”

The offer brought a grin to Dean’s face. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place, Luci?” He stepped aside and accepted the way that the other kid elbowed his way into the house, because yeah, Dean might have earned it.

Mom and Dad had rented the Pirate’s of the Caribbean movie a couple of days ago, and even though Sam had already seen it, Jess hadn’t, so that’s what they were going to watch. Dean made sure the kids were settled on the couch, a bowl of snacks between them, and the living room light turned out by request. 

“You’re not going to watch it with us?” Sam asked, arching over the back of the couch, practically kneeling in his seat as he watched Dean make for the back door. 

“Nah, that Orlando Bloom guy pisses me off―but you two have fun.” He slipped out back, calling for Sammy to save him some popcorn, even though he knew his kid brother wouldn’t.

Nick was taking his time closing the door with far more care than it needed.

“Come on,” Dean urged as he planted himself on one of the plastic lawn chairs, holding a hand out expectantly, “pay up.”

Grumbling, Luci took a seat, digging in the pocket of his jeans and pulling out a battered Altoids tin, and from the tin his ‘rent’. Instead of handing it over though he put it between his lips and lit it with a pink and orange Bic lighter. He let out a lazy circle of smoke, smiling smugly before finally handing the joint over to Dean.

He would have called the other guy a show-off, but that would have been admitting that the smoke ring was actually pretty cool, and that wasn’t who Dean was. He sank low in his seat, blowing out smoke towards the night sky and doing his best to pretend he was out here alone. 

Which was annoyingly hard to do.

“Were you swimming today or something?” He asked, opening one eye. “You smell like a pool.”

The guy beside him was scrubbing his palms against his knees, his smile long gone. “Yeah. Something.”

Dean frowned at the not-answer and passed back the joint, thinking that Lu might need it a little more than him tonight. There wasn’t really any small talk to make. Dean knew and didn’t care how the other guy’s family was, also didn’t care about why school had started back up but Lu had stayed here at home instead of going back to his private school the next state over. 

So they smoked in silence, until Dean was feeling distant and happy, and then he loudly announced to no one in particular, “Fuck, it’s good to be home.”

“ _ Really _ ?”

“Yeah, man. My uncle’s great and all, but no replacement for being back in my own bed and getting to play around with Sammy. I love it.”

“I hate this town,” Nick whispered with a lot more venom than expected.

“It’s not  _ that  _ bad.”

“Maybe not for you. You’re Dean  _ Winchester _ .” He pushed his hands through his hair and turned his bloodshot eyes out at the dark yard. “I’m gonna’ go crazy if I stay here.”

“Oh, boo hoo, so you’re stuck here like the rest of us, no more getting breakfast in bed or whatever you’re used to back at your rich kid school. Deal with it.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

Dean couldn’t really argue with that, so he stretched his arms out and lightly smacked the back of Nick’s head. “Come on, I’m feeling good right now, don’t fuck it up.”

Like a knee jerk reaction, Nick kicked Dean’s ankle. “Speaking of fucking up, while I was at school they switched mine and Jess’ rooms around.”

“Aw, they stick you in the pink princess room?”

“They stuck me in the room at the back of the house and now I can see straight in your bedroom.”

“How do you know it’s my room?”

“Because I saw you doing the nasty with some blonde chick in a short skirt last Friday night,” which was possibly the most ridiculous way to describe what had happened.

“ _ Doing the nasty, _ ” Dean snorted, laughing hard enough his stomach hurt. Struggling to calm himself down, he wiped at his eyes and asked, “She was super hot though, right? I met her at the pizza place down on Maple. She’s eighteen and saving up for college.” Dean bit his lip, remembering very fondly, “And she had this little tattoo on her ass―”

“Yeah. I noticed. It was a butterfly.”

Dean thought about how close their houses were and very almost managed to feel embarrassed by the fact that he’d had an audience. “Got quite a view from your room then, don’t you, Luci?”

He made a face, pulling a second joint out and lighting up. 

“Well, you know the first show’s free, but I’ll have to charge you next time.”

“If you think I’m giving you drugs in exchange for getting to watch you go down on some blonde bimbo, you’re dumber than you look.”

“Not your type?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, liking the dirty look he was getting as he inched closer. “Because I’m open to requests if blondes aren’t your favorite flavor.”

Nick blew sharp scented smoke in Dean’s face, sending Dean back in his seat, coughing softly. 

“Fuck, Luci. Do you  _ always  _ have to be such a bitch?”

“Stop calling me that, or I swear to god...” he grumbled, licking his lips.

“You allowed to do that?” It was an honest question and Dean’s hazy mind suddenly needed an answer. “Swearing to god… I mean, doesn’t that get weird with your dad being a preacher and all?”

“He’s  _ not  _ my dad,” Nick bit off the words.

“ _ Step _ dad,” Dean corrected himself with a roll of his eyes, “whatever.”

The boy from next door blew smoke through his nose like a furious cartoon bull, repeating, “He’s not my dad.”

“Sorry.” Dean held his hands up in surrender, not feeling ready for a fight right then. “So like… was the tattoo the issue? Because I thought it was hot, but I get it if you’ve got this thing for ‘good’ girls. I can dig the school uniform and cute braids.”

After a very long, very flat look, Nick handed over his joint and rubbed both hands over his face with a deep sigh. “I like brunettes… with freckles, and tan-lines, and a dirty mouth, and long legs I can’t stop imagining around my waist.”

“ _ Luci _ !” Dean tried to hold back a laugh as he grinned at the guy beside him, who was still hiding his face in his hands. Teasing, he kicked at Nick’s legs, “I had no idea you had it in you. You’re getting me all hot under the collar, man. Keep going. Tell me about the kind of girl I can look forward to you bringing home for me to perv on.” 

Nick sank down as low as his chair would let him, his scrawny ass nearly falling off the seat. 

“I mean, the girl you can look forward to  _ me _ bringing home, I am still taking requests for next week’s show.”

“I hate you… so much.”

Dean laughed, reaching over and patting Nick’s mess of hair. “Same, man. Same.”

  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \----

Maybe it would have been better if Dean had come to his brother’s wedding without a plus one. If he’d been alone he would have been able to tuck tail and run the moment he laid eyes on the walking wet dream that the boy next door had turned into. 

As annoying as it was, Dean had always been weak for a man in uniform, which he  _ knew  _ that Nick knew about―which meant that Dean had no choice but to take the man’s chosen outfit as a direct challenge. It was the same as when they were teenagers and Nick would come home from that awful Catholic school his parents had transferred him to, and the bastard would stand in front of his open bedroom window and take off his school uniform as slowly as possible. That man had had Dean’s number since the summer they turned seventeen and fuck if he hadn’t always flaunted it with those clean lines of his shoulders and all those pretty white buttons. 

Dean should have just walked away and left the son of a bitch without the satisfaction of knowing he’d struck the first blow, but that would have meant abandoning Lisa to Nick’s less than tender mercies, and Dean couldn’t do that to his friend. 

Summoning up whatever courage he could find, and fixing his best bitch face firmly in place, Dean got up and followed after his friend. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, thank you guys for the warm welcoming to this story <3

\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

By the time he caught up with Lisa a small crowd had formed because apparently everyone other than Dean was excited to see Nick again. Most notably were his own parents, and he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the weird friendship between the boy next door and John Winchester. It had been strange back when they were kids, and it was strange now, seeing Nick getting passed between John and Mary, getting hugged like he was one of their own sons. 

  
  
  


\----  **Early May, 2004** \----

Mom had rented a carpet cleaner that morning so the boys could shampoo their rugs, which apparently they’d needed to do for years now, though Dean had his suspicions that she was just looking for busy work for the boys to do. After too many years apart with only weekly phone calls and long summer visits, Sam and Dean had a lot of catching up to do, which (according to Mary) was very loud and dangerous and they needed to find something productive to occupy themselves over the weekend. 

Dean didn’t mind the work. He honestly liked cleaning, and fixing things. He enjoyed keeping his hands busy. 

He didn’t, however, like the chemical soap smell that had settled into the whole upstairs. Even by night, after having the windows open all day, his room still reeked of carpet shampoo. 

He was laying on his bed, enjoying the cool night wind, while struggling with the last few pages of the math packet that his new algebra teacher had assigned to help him get caught up with the rest of the class, when he heard the sound.

A sound like a sack of potatoes being thrown off the roof. 

Frowning, he sat up and looked out into the back yard, snorting with laughter when he saw the boy next door sprawled out on the lawn beneath the big tree. 

“Hey, Luci,” Dean called, pushing himself up to sit on the window ledge. “You break anything?”

“Just my ass,” Nick called back as he elegantly flipped Dean off and slowly got up. 

“What ass? You’re built like a stick figure with ears.”

Nick stood, brushing grass from his hair and his clothes and looking only a little worse for wear.

Dean swung his legs out of the window, resting his bare feet against the rough roof tiles, getting more comfortable. “Did you slip or did a moth spook you?”

Apparently the teasing wasn’t appreciated, because instead of answering, Nick found a stick and chucked it up at the second-story window. It barely missed Dean who dodged and he fell back into his room with a laugh. By the time he sat back up Lu had started to climb the fence and back into his own yard. 

Seeing his distraction from homework quickly departing, he swung himself back out the window. “Hey, wait up, man. Get over here.”

“Fuck you, Dean,” he hissed over his shoulder, barely even audible from the other side of the yard. 

“Come on. Don’t be a little bitch.” He stepped out onto the roof and grinned when Lu hesitated with one leg up over the fence. “I’m buying tonight. Get your busted, scrawny ass up here.”

It was a very generous offer in Dean’s opinion, and he waited impatiently as the other boy took his sweet time mulling it over before lowering himself back down. 

“Not through the back door,” Dean hissed, tromping to the edge of the roof and looking down. “My folks are down there. Just use the railing and come on.”

Getting up and down from the roof was easy enough for Dean, but he’d been doing it since he was a kid. Watching someone new try to navigate the climb was as funny as it was frustrating. Eventually, he had to offer a hand down to help haul Luci up to join him. 

Muttering his thanks, the boy next door followed Dean into his room, hesitating before taking his shoes off and sliding from the window down onto the bed. He left his shoes on the sill, folding his legs under him as he sat and looking around the room with a crooked frown. 

“It’s different from last time I was here,” he finally said. 

Dean pushed aside his homework. “Yeah, well, I think the last time you were up here we were like eight or something.”

“Maybe,” he nodded slowly, “yeah, probable seven or eight. You had Transformer toys and dinosaur posters.”

Laughing, Dean got up and dug in the back of his closet, coming back to toss a one-armed Optimus Prime action figure at the boy on his bed. 

“Oh, no way,” Nick whispered in awe. “I  _ knew _ you took him.”

“Did not. You left him in my yard.” It had been Dean’s argument all those years ago, and he was sticking to it. 

He pulled a towel from his laundry hamper, rolling it and shoving it against the crack under the door, and then flopping unceremoniously onto the bed beside the other boy, all the while ignoring the wild accusations being directed at him. 

Dean reached out through the space between them and jabbed a finger at a fresh-looking bruise on the other boy’s forearm. “This one’s new. How do you still manage to get into fights when you’re not even in school?”

“I am in school.” He slapped Dean’s hand away and tugged his sleeves down to his wrists. “My parents had me transferred back here to St. Francis, so now I’m in school with Jess like it used to be.”

“They get tired of paying for your fancy kid private school or did you get yourself kicked out?”

“It wasn’t a  _ private  _ school, it was a military academy.”

Dean made a dismissive sound. Any and all schools that you had to pay for and wear a uniform to attend were basically the same. “Whatever, man. Doesn’t seem to make a difference to you, seeing as you’re still pissing people off and getting into fights.” He poked at the bruise once more before rolling away as Nick took a swing at him. 

He accepted the sharp punch to the back of his shoulder as he rolled off the bed laughing, coming back with what remained of the stash he’d brought home with him from South Dakota. “This is all I’ve got left, so… you know, make it count, or whatever.”

“Isn’t it sort of a bad idea for a police officer’s son to be sneaking drugs in the house?”

“Probably not any worse than a preacher’s son sneaking out at night to get high.” Dean glanced over and felt his stomach clench hard. “Step-son,” he corrected softly. “I meant step-son.”

The cold glint in Nick’s eyes softened and he nodded once, accepting the small apology for what it was. He dug his lighter out and tossed it across the bed before laying back and looking up at the ceiling. “I miss the dinosaur posters.”

Half an hour later, Dean realized he did too. 

His mind was hazy, his thoughts slow, but his memory was sharp as he lay there beside the boy next door rattling off dinosaur facts like he had a textbook in front of him. He was a bit surprised at just how much he remembered, and living for the wide-eyed expression on the other boy’s face.

“There’s no way,” Lu snorted softly, but still grinning his crooked grin. “No fucking way it had two brains. Nothing has two brains.”

“Hind-brain,” Dean argued, taking a long drag, watching the paper burning down almost to his fingertips. “It’s called a hind-brain, man. And it’s totally a thing with the real big boy dinos.”

“You’re so full of shit,” he laughed again, reaching over and wiggling his fingers until Dean grudgingly passed over the last of his stash. 

“Twenty bucks says I’m right,” Dean stretched out long, his fingers brushing the edge of his curtain that had caught his eye as it flickered in the breeze. “You, me, library this weekend. Bring your wallet, bitch.”

“You are so on…  _ bitch _ .”

Dean didn’t know why the word sounded so funny when the other boy said it, but it really did and he found himself giggling, curling onto his side. The happy feeling twisted its way through him, stopping abruptly when a sharp knock rapped against his bedroom door. Fear took the palace of anything pleasant inside of him and he scrambled to sit up. 

Lu didn’t seem to feel even a fraction of the same urgency, slapping away all of Dean’s panicked attempts to grab and hide the evidence. 

The door swung open enough for John to poke his head in, and the old man’s face instantly went stony. 

Panic gave way to actual fear as Dean watching his dad enter the room and softly close the door behind him. Dean couldn’t move, couldn’t think of any excuse, his mind going blank with fear. 

“Hey, Sergeant Winchester,” Lu drawled beside him, voice light and easy, the last few obvious remains of the joint they’d been sharing tucked into the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “How you been?”

Dean realized that the boy next door wasn’t actually fearless, he was insane. The kid had a death wish and he was going to take Dean down with him. 

The hollow of John’s cheeks darkened as he took in the mess before him. 

Lu sat up in a single boneless motion. “Sorry, Sir. Didn’t mean to be rude,” and smiling, he took the joint from his lips and held it out like an offer.

If Dean could have convinced his body to move, then he’d crawl out the window. Heart rattling against his ribs, and his blood cold, he watched in confused horror as his dad smiled.

“Don’t think that just because I let you off easy a few weeks ago, Nick, that you can come in my house and act like a little smart ass,” John took the offered joint and dropped it into a half filled glass of water on Dean’s desk. He looked long and hard at the two before finally saying “Mary made brownies, if you boys wanna come downstairs… maybe air yourselves out a bit first though, or your mom’s going to ship you straight back to your uncle’s.”

Dean nodded slowly, his mind stuttering as he tried to come to terms with the fact that he somehow wasn’t in trouble.

“And grab some vanilla ice cream from the garage,” Dad tacked on, opening back up the door.

“Yes, Sir,” Dean managed to squeak out.

John looked back at them both and sighed, shaking his head. “And use the door next time, Nick. Your mom would be real upset if you fell off our roof and broke something.”

The boy from next door rolled his eyes and made a sound like he didn’t believe John for a second. 

Dad left, the door only swinging closed for an instant before cracking open again. Only John’s head came in the door this time, and he fixed Nick with a long, odd look before asking, “This isn’t like the track meet a few weeks ago. Right?”

Nick tensed for the first time since they’d been caught, his back going rigid as he quickly shook his head and whispered, “No, Sir.”

“Alright. Alright. Just…” Dad gave them both a strange look, and quickly added, “don’t forget to grab the ice cream,” before closing the door.

Fear didn’t leave Dean nearly as quickly as it seemed to leave the boy beside him, Nick letting out a sharp breath before falling back against the blankets and closing his eyes. 

“What the hell, man?” Dean demanded.

Nick shook his head.

“What the actual hell, Luci? What the fuck was that all about? You using some kind of voodoo mind powers on my old man, or what? I thought he was going to kill me.”

“He’s kind of a pushover when you get to know him,” Nick breathed out, his breath catching as he pushed his hands over his face and through his hair, his movements and his tone not at all matching the casualness of his words. 

“He sure as shit isn’t.” Dean picked up his pillow and brought it down hard on the other boy’s head. “And what track meet? What the hell did I miss while I was gone? You don’t run.”

Nick pulled the pillow from Dean’s hands and tossed it across the room. “It was your brother’s meet. Right before Spring Break. Jess wanted to go watch him, so I had to go too… and your dad, he sort of caught me under the bleachers with this kid from the other school.”

Dean nodded slowly, not at all sure how tonight was or wasn’t the same as Nick getting caught smoking at some track meet. Just like he wasn’t sure why Dad would let the other boy off with nothing more than a warning. 

There were an awful lot of things about Nick that Dean just wasn’t sure about.

  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Dean hung back, catching Lisa’s wrist and trying to keep her from joining the crowd. “Come on,” he urged. “Let’s just head back to the hotel.”

She let herself be pulled, placing her hands against Dean’s chest and smiling. “You don’t want to say hello?”

“I don’t want to get in a fistfight at my brother’s wedding dinner,” Dean smiled back tightly, “I think it’s probably bad luck or something. Besides, he’s an asshole, and you really don’t need to be introduced to  _ another _ asshole, right?”

“You never let me have any fun.”

“You’re not here to have fun, Lisa,” Dean pointed out, laughing softly at the way she was pouting up at him. “You’re supposed to be keeping me out of trouble.” He started to draw her towards where they’d been sitting, towards the exit, but along the way, Dean made the mistake of looking back.

Over the heads and shoulders of the other guests, Nick’s eyes caught Dean’s, and like a deer in headlights, Dean couldn’t move. A heavy, choking feeling, far too close to guilt, churned in his stomach and rooted his feet to the floor. 

Dean had spent countless showers picking over every nuance of what he’d say to this guy. He’d played their reunion, this very moment, over and over in his mind for years until he was sure that he’d know exactly what to say to Nick the next time he saw him. 

All those scenarios, however, not a single one had included the possibility that Nick would simply turn away. 

Being ignored was never supposed to be an option―but Nick hardly let a glimmer of recognition pass over his face before he turned back to family and friends, smiling and talking like there wasn’t a reason in the world not to. 

Like he couldn’t even bring himself to be concerned that Dean was in the same room as him after all this time. 

“Did you see that?” Dean demanded.

“See what?” His friend hooked her arm around his waist and looked around.

“That son of a bitch,” the weight in Dean’s chest was leaving him, making room for the flood of outrage, “he rolled his eyes at me.”

“He…” Lisa looked back at the head of the table. “Dean, honey, I don’t even think he noticed you.”

“Oh, he sure as hell did.” Over all the months since the wedding announcement, out of all the feeling that Dean had anticipated having when faced with his childhood sweetheart, dismissed was not one of them. “Fuck him if he thinks that’s how this is going to go.”

“Dean,” she said like a warning, apparently recognizing the tone in his voice. “Dean. No.”

The problem with bringing Lisa along for his protection was that she was tiny. She wouldn’t reach a hundred and thirty pounds even soaking wet. It meant that she couldn’t work as an anchor no matter how hard she tried, and Dean dragged her along almost effortlessly as he wove through the other guests. 

The restaurant they were having the practice dinner at wasn’t all that big, so there wasn’t too much floor space to cover before Dean reached his brother, not a whole lot of time to come up with a cutting way to say ‘how dare you’ to the boy who’d grown up next door to him. 

“Hey, Sammy,” he started with a smile, “we were gonna get headed back to the hotel. It’s getting late.”

“Since when is it ever too late for you?” Sam laughed, pulling Dean into a hug, whispering, “you’re not driving, right? You smell sauced.”

“Nah, we walked here. Our hotel is just two blocks down.” He slapped his brother on the back, returning the bone-crushing hug. There was an itch between his shoulders, that silent knowing that he was being watched. And though it wasn’t a great act, Dean turned and hugged his way around the circle. First Mom, then Dad (really more a hesitant pat on John’s shoulder than a hug), and Jess, before stopping short as he rounded the circle and came to Nick. 

“Oh…” Dean dragged out, doing his best to feign confusion and surprise. “Sorry. I don’t think we were introduced earlier.”

Jess batted at his arm. “Come on, Dean. I know he’s all grown up, but you remember my brother Nick.”

“ _ Nick _ ?” Dean repeated slowly like he was hearing the name for the first time, and hated the way the other man was watching him with zero emotions in his flat blue eyes. Alcohol and anger were never a good combination, and Dean’s chest felt tight as he forced a smile and said, “Oh wow. I didn’t even recognize you. How’ve you been,  _ Luci _ ?”

The nickname felt odd in his mouth after all these years, especially when faced with the devastating sort of man that scrawny, little, glasses-wearing, boy next door, ‘Luci’ had grown into. But, Dean couldn't help himself. He needed a reaction. He  _ needed _ to see the acknowledgment in the other man’s face. 

Dean needed to know that after all this time, whatever old ache he was still feeling, that Nick was still feeling it too.

He got nothing. 

Like he’d stood there insulting a brick wall. 

Without even a flicker of emotion, Nick nodded once, then turned to his sister and excused himself by softly saying, “I’m going to go find something to eat.”

It tore at Dean to watch the other man leave, and even though he tried to keep it to himself something must have shone through because Lisa was suddenly squeezing his hand.

They made it outside, the hot night air settling heavily around them like a blanket, and Dean was having a hard time breathing. He wanted to storm back inside, find Nick and start yelling at him. He wanted to take a swing at the other man’s stupid, handsome face, and blame him for every night that Dean had ever laid awake in bed wondering how they’d screwed things up so badly.

Instead, he let Lisa pull him along down the sidewalk.

“I’m not saying that the two of you didn’t make each other miserable when you were growing up,” his friend kept a tight hold of his hand, almost like she could tell that Dean wanted to go back to the restaurant. “But he didn’t seem all that bad. Maybe he grew out of being an ass… like you did.”

“I did not,” Dean didn’t want her going around spreading lies about him like that, “and he sure as hell didn’t either. You saw the way he was looking at me.”

“Yeah. He looked like he hardly even recognized you.” She tucked herself under his arm while they walked, making herself a firm weight to help keep him grounded. “Maybe whatever you two went through when you were kids just wasn’t as important to him as it was to you.” 

Lisa was trying to help. Dean knew her well enough to read between the lines, but she didn’t know what she was talking about―and how could she? All those stories Dean had told her about when he and Nick were kids had been just that. Stories  _ only  _ about when they were kids and they couldn’t ever seem to do anything other than make each other mad. 

He’d never once felt brave enough to pick open that old wound and tell Lisa about when things between him and Nick started to change. 

  
  
  
  


\----  **Late May, 2004** \----

With only one week of school left, Dean was pretty pissed off to find out that even after all his makeup work in math, that if he didn’t get at least a B on his final, that he’d have to repeat the class again in the fall. The teacher may as well have asked for an A+. Math wasn’t Dean’s strongest subject, it wasn’t even his fourth strongest subject―and these were things that he explained to the really cute teacher’s assistant after class. Maybe he wasn’t good at math, but he was great at flirting, and it didn’t take too much effort to talk the pretty brunette girl into coming over Friday after school to help him study. 

And seeing as Dean really didn’t want to repeat the stupid math class next school year, they actually did a little bit of studying, but mostly they made out on his bed. Nothing too heavy, he only got to second base, but he made sure that the curtains were left open in case a certain boy next door wanted a bit of a show. 

There was a brief attempt at a little more studying before John and Mary wanted to head out for their date night, which meant that Dean’s classmate needed to head home (for some reason’s Dean’s parents didn’t like the idea of him having a girl over while they were gone). It all left Dean home babysitting Sammy, and in a fantastic mood.

“Hey, kiddo,” He came up behind his brother, messing up Sam’s hair, “you wanna go next door and see if Jess wants to come over for a movie or something?”

Sam grinned as he smoothed his hands through his hair, tucking it behind his ears. “Can we order a pizza?”

Dean loved the sort of man his brother was growing up to be. The kid had his priorities in order; pretty girls and then pizza. 

“I’ll order the food, go over and get your Jess,” Dean headed towards the kitchen phone, hesitating before adding, “and see if her dumb brother wants to come too.”

Apparently the dumb brother didn’t want to, and Dean frowned when only two people came back through the door five minutes later. 

“Where’s Luci?” Dean asked, looking up when he heard the door opening and the two kids giggling as they came in. 

Jess shrugged. “He’s swimming,” she said, going straight for the couch and flopping down. 

It was technically still spring, hardly even t-shirt weather, and nights were still cold enough that Dean was wearing pajama pants to bed. Which meant it was a crazy time to decide to swim. 

He looked out the kitchen windows at the dark sky, wondering why his neighbor had to be so damn crazy. Sighing, Dean followed after the kids and asked, “Is he coming over later?” 

“I don’t know,” Jess shrugged, finding a way to bring the movement closer to Sam as the two kids went right back to discussing what movie they wanted to watch. 

Dean didn’t know why it even mattered, but he wanted the boy next door over here with them. He pulled on his shoes, trying to convince himself that he just didn’t want to be stuck babysitting two giggling kids all night and could use some company. Even crappy company. 

“Just in case the delivery guy shows up before I drag the princess over here,” Dean explained, pulling the pizza money from his wallet and handing it to Sam. He turned to Jess, double-checking that her parents were also out for the night, before taking himself out to the backyard and hopping the fence. 

Many long summer afternoons were spent over in the neighbor’s pool. His mom and Mrs. Williams would sunbathe and gossip while their kids swam and splashed and slapped each other with pool noodles. There had also been BBQs and birthday parties, and even though Dean hadn’t been back here in years the yard looked just like he remembered it.

With the exception of the very lanky boy swimming laps. 

Though the boy next door certainly wasn’t new, he was definitely different from when they were kids.

Dean padded through the grass and over the cement to stand at the edge of the pool. He called out a hello in the brief moment that the other boy surfaced, but it didn’t seem like Nick heard him as he dove back beneath the water and towards the opposite side of the pool. 

Dean knew how to swim, but it was for fun and not for speed, and he stood there silent and slightly intimidated as he watched the other boy cutting through the water. It was like watching a shark swim, effortless and with no wasted movement, and after a few minutes, Dean realized he was actually kind of jealous. 

Knowing that there was no way in hell he could do this better than Nick, Dean felt fairly confident that he could at least screw up the other kid’s rhythm. He toed off his shoes and slid out of his jeans and T-shirt. 

Before he could fully work up the courage to plunge into the cold water, he saw that Nick had stopped doing his laps. A trail of bubbles disrupting the surface over the pale blur at the bottom of the pool where the other boy had decided to sit.

Promising himself that the opportunity to scare Nick would be well worth the effort, Dean sat on the edge of the pool before easing himself in, the cold water pressing against his body in a way that made him instantly regret this whole plan. He took a rough breath before dunking himself into the water and swimming down.

It didn’t take much to startle Nick.

All Dean had to do was grab the other guy’s shoulders, and the water around him erupted into a flurry of sharp limbs and bubbles. He swam back up to the surface, laughing and wiping water from his eyes.

Luci came up a second after, gasping for breath, coughing and gagging and clinging to the edge of the pool.

“Come on, man,” Dean paddled over lazily, still laughing. “You’re fine. It’s just me.”

Chlorine had made his eyes red, which only made Nick look all the more furious as he glowered over his shoulder at Dean, still coughing and choking. 

“When you’re done dying, you wanna come over for pizza?” Dean teased. 

Nick managed to shake his head, and flip Dean off, but words were apparently still asking a little too much considering how much water he must have swallowed. 

“You gonna be ok?” He grabbed the edge of the pool, drawing himself closer, his laugh fading under some resentful concern. It wasn’t fun scaring someone if they ended up getting hurt, and Dean hated the idea of having to feel any kind of guilt over this. “Like, I don’t wanna give you mouth to mouth, dude. So start breathing.” He ignored the way that the other kid tried to kick him, the movement muted and slow under the water. Dean reached over, thumping Nick on the back with the flat of his hand because that’s what you do when people are choking. 

It was only when Nick made that awful sound did Dean notice the bruises. 

There were long purple and blue marks all over the other kid’s back.

Dean hadn’t even thought about apologizing, the words were just falling out of him in a rush and he held his hand against his chest with this awful and irrational feeling of guilt like he’d somehow been the one to leave those ugly marks. 

Not scared, but definitely feeling some sort of emotion in the same zip code, Dean watched the other boy push himself half out of the pool, grabbing a shirt and quickly pulling it on over his head. Water instantly soaked through the cloth, painting it against Nick’s skin, showing the pattern of his ribs and the thin line of a chain around his neck, before he sank chin deep into the pool. 

“What do you want?” Nick forced out between wet coughs.

“Wanted to tell you there’s pizza at our place.” The offer felt rather small suddenly, like it wasn’t even half as good enough of a reason to be over here.

“Neat,” Nick pushed his hair up off his forehead. “Go the fuck away.”

Dean flatly ignored that demand and asked, “You alright?”

Nick blew him off, offering no answer as he pulled himself out of the pool. A puddle rapidly formed as he sat with his legs dangling in the water. He looked down at himself and softly said in the most defeated tone possible, “This isn’t my shirt.”

“Yeah,” Dean folded his arms over the edge of the pool and tried to find a smile, “but it looks better on you anyways.” 

Nick watched him with this steady, unblinking expression that crawled user Dean’s skin and made him want to sink down until he could hide under the water. Stubbornly, he kept his smile in place, nudging the other boy’s leg with his elbow. 

“So, how about that pizza?” Dean offered again. 

Some of the tension went out of Nick’s narrow shoulders. Kicking his legs slowly, he mumbled a soft, “Yeah, I guess I could go for some pizza.”

“Well then come on. If we don’t hurry back Sam’s gonna eat the whole thing.” Dean grinned and pulled himself out of the water, pausing to lean down and shake himself like a dog, sprinkling water all over Nick. 

He thought it would earn him a laugh, or at least a shove and a dirty look. The goal was to distract Nick from the awkward. 

The goal was  _ not _ to get himself thrown back into the pool.

He didn’t even think that Nick was strong enough to pick him up. 

But one moment he was standing there and laughing, and the next he was stumbling back as Nick jumped to his feet, scooped Dean up like a bride, and flung him into the deep end. 

Dean surfaced, sputtering and laughing, just in time to see Nick picking up his glasses from the edge of the pool and turning to walk into the house. 

Not about to be left behind, he hauled himself up and followed. 

They were both halfway up the stairs before Nick turned on him. “What are you doing?”

“Just… checking out the scenery,” Dean shrugged and busied himself with looking at the family photos that lined the stairwell. “You were kind of a goofy lookin’ kid, you know that?”

Nick narrowed his eyes at Dean and the puddle slowly forming beneath him. “Don’t make me push you down the stairs,” 

“I mean, just look at you,” he pointed to a picture of Nick and Jess. “What with this outfit? You look like Pinocchio or something.”

“Look, I’ve already got to clean up all the water, I don’t mind cleaning up blood too,” Nick left the threat very open, his eyes dark, but a smile was curling the edges of his mouth. 

Dean nudged Nick, pushing him further up the stairs. “I wanna see your new room. Then grab me a towel, I’ll clean up my own damn puddles.”

Ignoring all the shiving, Nick stayed planted on his step. “You’re not even supposed to be in the house.”

“I won't tell if you won’t,” Dean grinned, stepping around Nick and walking himself up to the other boy’s bedroom. “You know, I don’t think my little kid brain ever noticed, but I think our houses are mirror images of eachother or something.”

“The kitchens are a little different, but yeah,” Nick followed, sounding resigned. 

It made it easy enough to find the right bedroom, even though technically Dean had never been inside. He stopped in the doorway, looking around and fighting back a frown. “How long have you been home, man?”

“Since winter break,” Nick grumbled, throwing a towel over Dean’s shoulder as he pushed past and into his own room.

He twisted the towel between his hands before hooking it around his neck like a scarf. “Where’s all your stuff?” 

“This is all my stuff.” He frowned over at Dean before adding, “I don’t like clutter.”

There was a bed, a dresser, a desk, all those basic things, but it all looked almost unlived in. No posters on the walls, no clothes on the floor, nothing at all out of place simply because there wasn't enough stuff to be out of place. 

Except for a couple of notebooks and the safety yellow walkman on the edge of the desk. 

A feeling almost like excitement crept over Dean as he invited himself into the other boy’s space, making a beeline for the desk. 

“You son of a bitch,” Dean grinned and picked up the walkman, turning it over in his hands to see  _ DEAN _ written in faded letters on the back. “I’ve been looking everywhere for this.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nick said in a way that made it a little too obvious that he knew exactly what they were talking about. 

“When did you even take it?”

“I didn’t  _ take _ it. I found it. You must have left it in my yard or something,” he waved off the accusation, “like I did with my Optimus Prime that’s been in your closet for years.”

Nick had stolen Dean’s walkman, and Dean felt nothing but proud. 

He set the contraband back on the desk, still grinning as he began leafing through the notebooks. 

A floorboard creaked, and before Dean could even glance over his shoulder Nick was pushing him away from the desk and collecting up all the notebooks.

“Didn’t want me peeking at your diary?” Dean teased, even though the only things he’d seen were cramped class notes and little doodles in the margins. 

“Stop touching things.  _ Please _ ,” Nick pleaded. 

Even though Dean thrived on irritating people, the obvious anxiety in the other kid gave him pause. A pause that was just long enough to take notice of something he’d been too distracted to see when they’d been in the pool. 

“Is… is that a hickey?” 

The grin came first, quickly followed by a rush of red to Nick’s cheeks as he turned away and busied himself with pulling out dry clothes from his closet. 

“Luci! You’ve been holding out on me?”

“I don’t tell you everything,” Nick couldn’t meet his eye, still grinning to himself.

“You don’t tell me  _ anything _ .” Which was just how things always were between them. But when they were kids there hadn’t been any stories worth sharing. This was different. “Come on. I want details. What’s she look like? Is she hot, or a big nerd like you?”

“It’s just someone from school,” the other boy tentatively put his hand over the faint marks on his neck, hugging his fresh clothes against his chest. “We’ve got PE together for our last class, and might have snuck off for a bit while everyone else was running the mile.”

Never in his life had Dean thought he’d have something in common with the boy next door. Nick was bookish and far too serious, and there were crosses on the walls downstairs. But ditching class to make out with some girl? That was something that Dean could absolutely get behind. 

“So…” He grinned, not yet ready to let this go, “how did the girl I bring home today measure up?”

“With my friend?” Nick swayed in place, glancing out his window into Dean’s dark bedroom, his smile going a little strange. 

“Yeah, man,” Dean nudged him, nodding to the space between their houses. “You get a chance to see her? I didn’t check to make sure you were up here, but I opened my curtains for you because I’m generous like that.”

“I saw her.” He turned back to Dean, shrugging almost apologetically. “She wasn’t really my type.”

“Oh, come on. Brunet. Killer smile. Legs for days―did you see the shorts she was wearing? Thank god for a relaxed dress code, am I right?”

Nick shook his head, a shadow of his grin creeping back in as he repeated, “Not my type.”

“I swear, you’re this fucking difficult on purpose.”

“I’m going to go change,” he brushed off Dean’s accusation, pausing before he could reach the door. “You can head back to the kids and I’ll catch up in a bit.”

And yeah, Dean probably did need to head on home, because Sammy and Jess almost definitely needed some supervision if they planned to keep smiling at each other like they had been. 

He didn’t even make it halfway back home though. Dean hardly made it even a few steps from Nick’s bedroom before he got distracted, lingering on the stairs for far longer than it felt like. Glancing up to the sound of footsteps, Dean saw the boy next door, dressed in clean dry clothes, standing at the top of the stairs giving him a very odd frown.

“That was fast,” Dean straightened, twisting his now damp towel between his hands and feeling weirdly self-conscious all of a sudden.

“What are you doing?” Being up at the top of the stairs only made it too easy for Nick to look down at Dean with a frown that he wore all too well.

“Just…” it felt a little obvious, which meant that Dean hated having to say it out loud, “I didn’t want to leave wet spots on the carpet. Your folks already fucking hate me.”

“You stole my mom’s car and wrecked it.”

“And I broke her son’s nose,” Dean pointed out with a grin.

“But more importantly, you stole her car and wrecked it.”

“Your mom’s got some weird priorities, man.” Though, to be fair Dean’s own parents tended to bring up the car accident an awful lot more often than they talked about the handful of times that Dean and Nick had tried to kill each other. Maybe because the car hadn’t done anything to Dean, whereas he and Nick had always gone blow for blow, bruise for bruise, broken bone for broken bone. Their fights had always been fair. 

Mrs. William’s car never stood a chance against that tree. 

“So,” Dean bounced on the balls of his still bare feet, “pizza… and maybe some pot?”

“I’m not your drug dealer.”

“Course you’re not,” he laughed, bounding up the stairs to pull an arm around Nick’s shoulders. “But come on. Friends share.”

“We’re not friends,” Nick ducked out of the circle of Dean’s arm and headed back towards his bedroom. 

“Well, ok. No. But we  _ are  _ neighbors. Plus, you think that little show this afternoon was free?”

“I never asked to watch you making out with some girl,” the other boy argued and pulled open the drawer of his desk to retrieve the little metal tin that he tossed Dean’s way. 

“But you’re still welcome, even if she somehow wasn’t your type.” He grinned, moving to slip the tin into his pocket before remembering that he was just wearing his boxers and a towel. His pants and shoes were still out by the pool, and he had no idea where his shirt had gone. “But she totally fit the bill, man. She should have checked all your boxes.”

“Not all my boxes.” Nick shook his head, pushing past Dean and heading downstairs. 

“You’re too picky,” Dean decided, following after the other boy, out to the backyard to retrieve his clothes and shoes. 

“Maybe you’re not picky enough,” was Nick’s argument as he waited for Dean to pull his jeans back on, watching him with a teasing hint of a smile. 

“Why be picky? Life’s short, Luci. Kiss who you want, especially the cute brunettes with great legs.”

Nick shook his head, his smiling growing in a frustrated way.

“Fine, fine,” Dean shoved his feet in his shoes, not bothering with the laces. “How about you show me these boxes I’m failing to check. I’ve brought home two beautiful girls, neither of which were good enough for you, you picky bastard. Your turn.”

It was too dark in the backyard to see clearly, but Dean got the impression that the other boy had started to blush again. 

“Come on,” Dean urged, “or are you chicken.”

“My parents would literally kill me.”

“Do it when they’re not home,” he was nothing if not an instigator. “I showed you mine. Now you show me yours.”

He meant that he wanted to see Nick’s lady friend. He wanted to see how this other guy’s type varied from the cutie Dean had brought home who apparently wasn’t good enough. 

What he wasn’t expecting was to look out his bedroom window the next Sunday afternoon to see the boy next door making out with some random dude.

Dean didn’t know the guy, which didn’t mean much. Even if Lawrence was a small town, he’d been gone for two years and new people did occasionally move in. That, coupled with the fact that the school Nick and Jess went to was all the way out in Topeka, and the dark-haired guy kissing Nick could be pretty much anyone. The two looked like they’d come straight from church, still in their Sunday best, mostly. And Dean couldn’t look away from how Nick was holding his ‘friend’ in place with such a beautifully tight grip on the other guy’s tie.

Dean knew he was supposed to have a reaction to this. A normal person  _ should _ have a strong reaction to seeing the boy they’d grown up next to fooling around with some strange guy. Preferably a bad reaction. 

Those were the rules rattling around somewhere inside of Dean’s head, at least. 

Instead he sat there, the book he’d been reading forgotten on his lap, watching what was going on next door and realizing that yeah, the girls that he’d brought home definitely hadn’t been Nick’s type.

Dean couldn’t use the excuse that he was ‘lost in thought’, because he wasn’t aware of a single thought going through his mind right then. All he knew was that strange new guy was pulling Nick over in the direction of the bed and Nick was grinning and laughing and happy in a way that made him look just as much like a stranger in Dean’s eyes. 

His short blond hair was a mess, his glasses crooked, his grin hungry, and his movements relaxed. This wasn’t the boy next door that Dean knew. This wasn’t the serious, frowning, never any dirt under his fingernails or holes in the knees of his jeans, kid that Dean remembered. 

Like Nick could feel that he was being watched, he suddenly looked out his bedroom window. Their eyes met, and in Nick’s sharp grin there wasn’t any confusion, embarrassment, guilt, or anything of those feelings that were suddenly singing through Dean. 

Nick’s was a ‘fuck you, Dean Winchester’ smile. 

Utterly fearless, and that there was the boy next door that Dean knew from his childhood. 

Dean didn’t know what to do. He was expected to respond but all he felt was panic that he’d been caught watching them. Fumbling, he reached for the nearest knee jerk reaction he could find, which turned out to be a snort of laughter and a shrug that said  _ ‘yeah, no big deal, am I supposed to be impressed or something? _ ’

All that confidence and fearlessness faltered for a brief moment, Nick’s eyes narrowing. 

It was beyond Dean how his own lack of a reaction was pissing off his neighbor, but then again, he’d never really understood how the guy’s mind worked. So he made a few less than subtle hand gestures before pointing at Nick and his ‘boyfriend’ and shrugging like a question.

Nick cocked his head. 

The boyfriend seemed to realise something weird was going on, and he turned to look out the window with Nick, his unfamiliar face going bright red once he saw that they had an audience. 

Dean couldn’t help himself. He saw an opening to make at least one person uncomfortable (even if that person wasn’t Nick), and he went for it. He flapped his hands in a casual ‘keep going’ sort of way, putting on an expectant face and loving how red Nick’s buddy was getting.

Nick seemed to like it less, pulling free of the awkward teenage embrace to stomp over to his window and pull the curtains closed. 

That should have been the end of it. 

Instead the curtains shifted and Nick’s pale face peeked out, like he wanted to double check that Dean was still there. 

And Dean didn’t know what to do anymore. His mind was buzzing with confusion over this little revelation and he had no idea how to process it yet, and the boy next door certainly wasn’t letting him have a moment’s peace to figure things out. 

So he gave two thumbs up and a grin, wishing the other boy good luck.

With an exasperated roll of his eyes, Nick shook his head, vanishing again before Dean could be positive of the fleeting smile he thought he’d seen. 

Just like that, Dean was suddenly alone with his thoughts. His absolute mess of thoughts, and oddly enough the one that boiled to the surface was that the boy Nick had brought home was actually sort of cute. 

  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

“Ok, I love you and all,” Lisa took the bottle from Dean’s hands without much of a fight, “but you need to stop because I’m not holding your hair while you’re puking later tonight.”

“I’m not drunk,” Dean grumbled, only slurring the slightest bit.

“Not yet,” she glanced at the two empty bottles on the bedside table. 

The moment they’d made it back to their room, he’d gone straight for the minibar, and quickly decided that this hotel sucked. For the price they’d paid for their room he’d expected to find something more than macadamia nuts, Snickers bars, half dozen bottles of local craft beers, half as many bottles of coke, and that was it. 

He needed something stronger, despite what Lisa kept insisting. 

She sat on the edge of the second bed, starting to pull her hair back in a braid. “You’ve got that brunch thing tomorrow morning. Maybe you should try to get some sleep.”

“I don’t need you to be my mom, Lis.”

“I’m not your mom, I’m your babysitter… and your friend,” she tacked on softly. 

Dean threw himself backwards on his bed, pressing his hands to his face as he replayed for the hundredth time the way that Nick’s eyes had passed over him with complete indifference. 

He felt the bed dip as his friend moved to sit beside him. She wanted to talk about this―because Lisa was a problem fixer and Dean was nothing if not a problem. 

“No,” he groaned. 

“How long have we known each other?”

“Since we were eighteen, so like,” his brain struggled with the sudden math, quickly giving up, “for a really long time.”

“Do you remember our second year in college, when you and what’s his face were dating for a hot minute you guys had the worst breakup in the world?”

“Gavin,” Dean supplied the missing name as a spark of anger curled in his chest. “God, what a fucking psychotic asshole he turned out to be.” He peered up at her from between his fingers, not really sure where she was going with all this. 

“For like two months afterwards you were like this. Grumbling and kicking the furniture and drinking way too much.”

“This isn’t the same.”

Frowning, she tugged at the edge of his sleeve then smoothed it out. “That guy tonight, was he Gavin levels of asshole back when you two were kids?”

“This isn’t the same,” he repeated.

“Then what, Dean?” She prodded him. “You’ve been acting like you’re expecting a fight all night, and then blondie walks in and you just shut down.”

“Well, you saw how he looked at me.”

“ _ Dean _ ,” Lisa shook his shoulders in frustration. “He didn’t even look at you. It’s all in your head.”

That was the problem.

Hating himself, Dean rolled over, pressed his face into the mattress and let out all the anger he felt in a single, muffled, guttural sound. 

After a long moment of hesitation, Lisa rested a hand on his shoulder. “Was he really that much of a bully?”

“He wasn’t a bully,” Dean ached as he forced out the words, “he was my best friend." 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a chapter that deals with some darker themes, which you might have noticed lurking in the fic tags :<  
> so, if you're not having a great day, maybe save this chapter until the next one comes out and read them back to back like a nice pallet cleanser <3  
> be good to yourself, my friends.

\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

“I need a drink,” Dean pushed himself up, looking around to see where Lisa had put the beer she’d stolen from him. 

“No,” she grabbed him by his belt, “you  _ need _ to back the fuck up and tell me what’s going on. You don’t get to complain to me about a guy for years and then casually throw out that he was also your best friend.”

He hung his head, wishing he’d kept his stupid mouth shut. 

Lisa wasn’t strong enough to pull Dean back to her, but she was stubborn enough to hold on to him until he grumbled and sat himself back down. She waited for him to settle before gently pulling him closer, tugging on him until he put his head on her shoulder. 

There was an awful long span of silence, Lisa waiting for Dean to talk and Dean waiting for Lisa to forget that he’d said anything. 

No such luck however, and she eventually asked, “So, best friends, huh?”

“He was still an asshole,” Dean closed his eyes, quietly admitting, “we both were. We were miserable kids who lived to make each other miserable.”

“And also besties?” She asked, laughter in her voice even while she sympathetically rubbed slow circles against his back. 

“That part came later.” Dean could tell by the aching in his gut and the pressure behind his eyes, that he’d either had too much to drink, or still not enough. “When we were sixteen he sort of started living at our house for a few months. I guess we just got used to each other.”

“I’m going to go ahead and point out that you used the word  _ ‘best friend’ _ , which I have literally never heard you say about anyone.”

Which was probably because Nick was the only person he’d ever felt that way about. 

Lisa being a strong contender, and also maybe Sammy, except that he was family, which meant that there was nothing his baby brother could ever do that Dean wouldn’t forgive. 

Nick was not given the same benefit. 

He didn’t deserve it. 

“Yeah, well, that son of a bitch… him and me,” Dean shook his head at the memory, “we went through some bad stuff together.”

“How bad do things need to get to change someone from the asshole kid next door that you can’t stand, to your best friend?”

  
  
  
  


**\---- June, 2004** \----

Dean was pretty sure that no police report had been filed, even though there should have been. There was no record of exactly when it happened, just some time right before summer break started. He was pretty sure it was evening because he remembered that he was helping Mom make dinner when the screaming started, and when he looked outside it was too dark to see anything. 

Before he could figure out what was going on, Dad was headed out the front door, moving surprisingly fast considering his bad leg. Mom had gone to the front door, telling Dean to stay inside and keep an eye on Sammy. 

Which was the worst. 

Standing around when something was wrong was simply not something Dean had ever been good at. 

He couldn’t remember how long he stood there with his brother, their noses pressed to the front window while they squinted out at the street trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Then Mom was coming into the house with both William’s kids under her arms, a mother hen protecting her chicks, even though Nick was a few inches taller than her. 

Jess was crying, deep hiccuping sobs as she clung to Mary’s side.

Nick was bleeding. Bleeding from his nose, his mouth, his head. His face was pinched in pain, but his eyes were dark and furious. 

Even years and years later Dean would be able to clearly remember that expression.

“Jess, sweetie, I need you to go with Sam and find the first aid kit in the garage,” Mom soothed, passing the little girl to her wide-eyed youngest son. As soon as the kids left the room, Mary sat Nick down at the table, pushing aside the dishes that had been set out for dinner. She was talking to him fast and soft as she pressed a napkin to his head. 

Dean was left with nothing to do but hover nearby, stomach tight with the need to do something, even though he had no idea what that something needed to be. 

Not that he was allowed to do much. Neither Mom or Nick seemed interested in letting him help. Which meant that he was designated to stay as an anxious bystander while Mary cleaned up Nick’s face, and when Sammy came back with the first-aid kit. 

Dean did his best to take care of the kids and keep them out of the kitchen, grabbing out two ice cream sandwiches and turning on some cartoons. Jess was still crying, but it had turned into mostly sniffles and scared glances back in the direction of her brother.

“What happened?” Dean asked softly, unwrapping her ice cream for her.

Jess’ lip trembled a touch and she shook her head.

Sam glared up at Dean like all this was somehow his fault, and Dean clenched his fists and walked away. 

He ended up sitting at the table, quietly watching Mom cleaning up Nick in the exact same way she’d cleaned up her own boys many times before. Mom was talking in that soothing voice she used just for bad days like this, and Nick answering everything with a soft ‘no, ma’am’ or ‘yes, ma’am’.

“What happened?” Dean asked again, quieter this time so that Jess wouldn’t overhear and start crying more. 

Mom let out a long breath and looked like she was choosing her words carefully.

Nick didn’t seem in the mood for careful, however, and he flatly said, “Jess dropped the carton of milk.” 

“On your face?”

“Dean,” Mary warned sharply.

He shrugged, not sure why he should be in trouble for asking an innocent, and very obvious question that needed to be asked.

“Zack hit her,” the other boy said in that same dead tone.

It took Dean what felt like an eternity to remember that Zack was their stepdad, the good Reverend Williams. 

Nick didn’t offer any more clarification, instead pulling away from Mary and ducking his head. 

“It doesn’t look like you’ll need stitches this time, but...” she assured, not looking like she was quite ready to give up on fussing over him. 

“I’m ok,” Nick insisted. In that same stubborn way that he’d always had, he got to his feet and started to clean up the mess made from cleaning all that blood off his face. 

“I’ve got it,” Mary took the stained paper towels from Nick’s hands, and pointed him in Dean’s direction. “Honey, why don’t you take him upstairs and get him something clean to wear.”

At last, given a clear task, Dean led the way to his room, looking back over his shoulder repeatedly to make sure he was still being followed. “You sure you’re ok, man?”

Nick only nodded once, keeping pace and keeping quiet. 

“Is Jess ok?” Dean asked, digging into the clean clothes piled high on the foot of his bed. 

Nick nodded again.

It was a very one-sided conversation, which might have been for the best. Dean was struggling with the idea of anyone being enough of a monster to raise their hand against the sweet little girl next door, especially for something as stupid as spilling milk. 

Even though he’d never been good at sympathy, he’d always been great at being an overprotective big brother, and he knew what he’d do if he’d been in Nick’s shoes. “Did you punch the son of a bitch?” 

“As hard as I could.” A flicker of a smile passed through Nick’s eyes.

“Fuck yeah,” Dean grinned, even though his stomach was in knots. He handed over some clothes and resisted the urge to pat Nick on the back or something else equally weird. “I… I’ll let you get dressed,” he said, nodding, and leaving the room. 

He meant to wait in the hall, but flickering blue and red lights coming in through the front window drew him downstairs. There were two cop cars outside, and standing there facing the uniformed officers was Dad. 

John’s arms were folded tight over his chest and he stood utterly unmoving as he stared down the other men. There was some sort of argument, a fair amount of gesturing, and one of the cops stepped away to make a call on his cell phone. 

Dean wished he was closer so he could hear what the argument was about. He wished that he could see where Mr. William’s was, because there didn’t seem to be anyone sitting in the back of either cop cars. 

He was staring so hard that he didn’t notice Nick coming to join him at the window. 

“Do you think your dad’s going to let them take me away?” Nick asked with a weirdly defeated weight to his words. 

“What?” Shaking off the fact that he’d been snuck up on, and his heart was still racing, Dean frowned. “No way. They’re here for your da― … for your step dad.”

Nick slowly shook his head slowly, his eyes distant as he watched the men arguing with John. “Last time they took me.”

“Last time?”

“Two years ago,” Nick’s jaw was hard, and he didn’t look over at Dean while he spoke. “I tried to push him down the stairs and I got sent off to military school for it.”

“You got sent away because you and me tried to kill each other,” Dean corrected, not sure how Nick could have gotten that so wrong.

A weak noise almost like a laugh rattled around in Nick’s chest before he glanced over and pointed out, “No gives a shit what happens to you and me. I got sent away for trying to kill him.”

Dean’s insides went cold. He didn’t move away from Nick, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to. Not out of fear, but just so he could get a better look at the kind of kid who could say something like that without any hint of emotion. 

“Dad won’t let them arrest you,” he said, even if he couldn’t put the force and certainty behind his words like he wanted.

“Yeah, but he can’t make them arrest Zack either.”

A need to defend his own dad came out of Dean like a visceral reaction. “Dad doesn’t put up with that kind of shit.”

Nick just shook his head, obviously having no faith in John.

It made Dean furious. Every part of that night made him furious. Nick’s words were just an easy and singular point to focus on. Dean started to pull together the pieces of his argument, but felt them falling away as he watched the police officers getting back in their cars, alone, and John making his way back home, walking through the grass with a tightness to his shoulders that was visible even from their vantage point at the window. 

“What the hell?” He didn’t even realize he’d said the words until he heard Nick answering. 

“Like I said, no one gives a shit what happens to us,” the other boy hugged himself, for the first time all night looking vulnerable. “This is a small town, Dean, and the police don’t arrest the preacher, no matter what he does.”

Words failed him. Dean, who could start a fight in an empty house, didn’t know what to say to that. 

Nick had to be wrong. It was obvious that his stepdad had beaten the hell out of him, and Dean had his suspicions that all the rough bruises he’d been seeing since he’d come home had all come from the same place. How could anyone beat their kid and not get in trouble for it?

It just didn’t make sense to Dean.

But Dad came into the house and the cops outside had turned off their lights and were leaving empty-handed.

“You and your sister are going to be staying here for a few days,” John said simply, nodding to Nick. “I’ll go over tomorrow morning with you if you want to get some of your things.”

Dean was standing close enough to the other boy to hear how hard he swallowed, and the way his breath sounded like it was being squeezed out of him. 

None of that was in Nick’s voice though as he quietly said, “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s get some ice on your face,” John offered like somehow that was what was going to fix all of this. “You and Jess had dinner yet?”

They hadn’t, and Dean was sent to go grab two more chairs while his parents added extra plates and cups and whispered to each other with their heads close together.

It was an uncomfortable dinner.

It was an uncomfortable night. 

There didn’t seem to be a single safe or easy thing to talk about, and Dean was very grateful that his parents just seemed to instinctively know what to do. 

Jess got to pick a movie instead of getting ready for bed, and she sat on the couch sandwiched between her big brother and Sam, leaving Dean with practically half the couch to himself where he could sit and pretend to be watching the movie while straining to listen to his parents talking in the other room. 

Beth Williams, Jess and Nick’s mom, had left more than a week ago for a missionary trip overseas and wouldn’t be back for two months. John wanted to try and get a hold of her and tell her to come back early. Mary kept insisting it would just be safer to keep the kids here with them for the summer, and she would do what she could send an email in the morning to her friend letting Beth know that Nick and Jess were ok and would be staying with them. 

Dean listened to these plans being made, glancing occasionally at the other kids on the couch. 

It wasn’t even that late, but Jess and Sam had fallen asleep, tucked so close to each other that they’d somehow managed to cram themselves both under Nick’s arm. 

“You ok?” Dean whispered. “Want me to send him off to bed?”

Nick glanced down at Sam and shook his head. “They’re fine. I don’t wanna’ wake Jess.”

“It’s sounding like you guys are going to be staying here until your mom comes back.”

Sighing like a surrender, Nick let his head fall forward, putting his chin to chest. 

Tonight sucked.

Dean hated feeling bad for the guy, especially since it didn’t seem like Nick wanted any pity or even any attention. If this was anyone else sitting on his couch with a split lip and the most defeated curve to their shoulders that Dean had ever seen, he’d have saddled up close and made some bad jokes and just been pleasantly annoying until he earned a smile. 

But this was Nick.

They didn’t have that kind of relationship.

They didn’t really have any relationship other than a shared history of arguing over the dumbest things imaginable.

“You wanna go upstairs and listen to music or whatever?” He offered, glancing sideways towards the distant sounds of his parents still talking. “The  _ whatever _ can be me paying you back for that little peep show the other day.” 

An offer which was apparently just about as good as a bad joke, because Nick looked up sharply while he fought to keep from smiling, his eyes dancing. 

“There’s something seriously wrong with you, Winchester.”

“ _ Moi _ ?” Dean feigned confusion, putting a hand to his chest. “I’m only offering our guest a little hospitality. How is that wrong?”

Nick shook his head, but the smile had started to tug at the corners of his lips. 

Regardless of the fact that Dean didn’t want to actually like Nick, he felt his insides going a little soft and squishy as he watched the other guy gently kissing the top of Jess’ head then slowly uncurling from her and settling his sister against Sam before pulling a blanket off the back of the couch and laying it over them both. 

“Awww,” Dean cooed. 

“Shut up,” Nick got to his feet, lightly kicking at Dean’s shins until Dean got up and led the way to his room. 

The only problem with this was, Dean didn’t actually have any ‘payment’ to offer. He’d had some sort of half-assed idea of possibly sneaking some alcohol, but seeing as it was kept on top of the fridge and Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, that was a no go. 

“So,” Nick pushed the bedroom door closed behind them, and asked something that Dean didn’t expect to hear, “you’re not going to call me a fag or something?”

There were a whole lot of unpleasant things that they could have talked about right then, and after a horrified moment of silence, Dean realized that this was actually the easiest conversation they could have. 

“Dude. No,” Dean inwardly squirmed at the word, not willing to even repeat it. “Life’s short. Kiss who you want.”

Nick seemed stuck, leaning against the bedroom door, his arms crossed behind his back as he stood there not quite looking at Dean. 

“Also, congrats, because he was kinda cute,” which wasn’t information that Dean had planned on sharing, but he also couldn’t deal with the way Nick wasn’t looking at him.

The sideways compliment caught Nick off guard, and he looked up with wide eyes. “You’re straight.”

“And?” Dean squared his shoulders in challenge. “Just because I like girls doesn’t mean I’m blind.”

“And… that’s it?”

“Yeah?” He shrugged.

“I don’t get you,” Nick slowly shook his head, pushing off the door and walking over to the stereo. “Do you have more of the music that was on the tape I stole?”

Dean frowned. “You stole a tape?”

“It was in your walkman,” he said softly, tracing his fingers over the sharp edges of the record player’s case. He softly started humming, eyes flicking to Dean expectantly.

After a moment of listening, Dean nodded and went to his record collection. “Ah, that would be The Rolling Stones, my friend. Sit yourself down.” 

Nick and the pile of clean clothes took up the majority of the bed, Dean sat on the floor, resting his head back against the mattress. 

They listened to the A and B sides or at least 3 records without saying a single word to each other. 

Dean had no idea how to help the boy from next door, all he knew was that he felt like he needed to, despite the stubborn lingering desire to pick a fight with him for old time’s sake. He couldn’t find the words though, just like he couldn’t find the spite to argue.

He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep until he was waking up on his bedroom floor, cramped and uncomfortable. 

Nick wasn’t on the bed. 

Dean had never been the sort of person to overthink things. He rolled to his feet and went searching until he found the other boy sitting on the couch, in the dark, lit only by the steady warm glow of the infomercial that was playing on a low volume. 

The little kids were gone, the blanket they’d been using neatly folded over the back of the couch once more. Dean had peeked into his brother’s room on his way downstairs, seeing Sammy on the floor in a sleeping bag and Jess curled up in the bed.

It all left Nick very alone on the big couch and somehow very small looking, despite how long and gangly he’d gotten over the years he’d been away.

Dean should have been satisfied with having found the other boy. He should have called it a night and put himself to bed so he could be well-rested for whatever weird adjustments he’d be needing to make to his life over the next few days and weeks. 

He didn’t leave the doorway fast enough to do that though. 

Nick shifted, wiping the backs of his wrists over his cheeks and sniffing quietly.

Yesterday Dean could have walked away.

But that night, after everything else, his feet simply refused to take him the wrong way. 

He sat down beside Nick with a bounce and a heavy sigh, pointing at the screen and asking, “You in the market from some commemorative coins?”

“Thinking of starting a collection,” Nick said in a rough voice. 

“I’ve got one of those buffalo head pennies, and some of those state quarters… but I don’t really get the big deal.”

“You’re the kind of guy who’s going to grow up to have a beer can collection or something. “

“Vintage records, or comics, or something cool, man. What kind of ass-hat collects beer cans?”

Nick ran his hands through his hair, snorting softly. “I can totally see it. You’ll keep them over the fireplace, show them off to company when they come over. ‘ _ This one here’s got a rare misprint. Only forty-two of them were ever in circulation _ ’.”

“Come on, you keep going like this and I’m gonna have to get all defensive and start calling you names.”

“Give it your best shot,” Nick grinned in a manic way, “do it. I dare you.”

“Cute,” Dean sneered.

Nick’s breath caught strangely. “Excuse you?”

“You think you grew up to be all super tough and cool and rebellious with your smoking and swearing, but nah. You’re  _ adorable _ .”

Sputtering, it took Nick far too long to look offended and demand, “How dare you.”

“I just wanna pinch those sweet little cheeks,” Dean poked the other guy’s face, very mindful to miss touching the fresh bruises.

Nick slapped his hands away, ducking his head to hide a real and genuine smile. 

And that’s what Dean had been looking for. 

Satisfied, he settled back into the couch, sighing and letting his eyes drift mostly closed. “It’s super hot up there, right?”

Glancing over, Nick made a sound somewhere between confusion and agreement. 

“In the summer it gets hot as hell upstairs. I usually just sleep down here… if you don’t mind the company, seeing as you’ve sort of stolen my couch and all.” Really, Dean could have easily gone back upstairs. It wasn’t that warm, and wouldn’t be that warm until late July―but if this was his Sammy down here looking like Nick was looking, then it would have taken an act of God to get Dean to leave. So, he stayed.

Or at least he offered.

Clearing his throat, and pulling his knees up to his chest, Nick shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind me watching TV for a bit.”

“Home Shopping Network isn’t really tv, but whatever you want, dude.” Dean stretched out, propping his feet up on the edge of the coffee table and settling in. 

It wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep, and when Mom shook him awake in the morning there wasn’t a part of Dean that didn’t feel cramp and stiff. 

“Hey,” he yawned, arching his back to hear that satisfying snap, crackle, pop of his spine. 

“Come help me with breakfast,” she whispered, smiling warmly at Dean and the space above Dean’s head. 

Still too asleep to be anything other than confused, Dean sat up and realized that the comfortable warm spot that he’d been sleeping in wasn’t just the couch, but pressed against Nick’s side, and what he’d thought was a throw pillow had been the other boy’s shoulder. 

Heat crept up Dean’s neck as he slid off the couch and hurried to the kitchen. 

Despite the old and forgotten chore list that said otherwise, it was almost always Dean’s turn to cook. He didn’t mind. It was his happy place. 

Sam was more than welcome to do yard work with Dad, and spend Saturdays mornings working on the car. Dean had always and would always love being a mama’s boy. Quiet mornings in the kitchen with Mom were one of his absolute favorite things.

Today felt different though. 

Mom hadn’t gotten the eggs out of the fridge, or the waffle iron from the cupboard. Instead, she was leaning against the counter, frowning at the coffee maker and chewing her lip. 

“What are we making today?” Dean hesitated, edging himself towards the fridge.

“Dean, sweetie…” she reached out to him, and dutifully he came to her and hugged her side. “I know that you and Nick have never really gotten along, but I need to ask you a favor.”

“I already hate where this is going.”

“I know,” she smiled and tightened her arm around him. “Here’s the thing though, I’m willing to offer you tickets to the concert of your choice in exchange for your help.”

“I’m listening.” Dean grinned slowly, willing to hear her out. 

She cracked a smile, ruffling his hair. “I know it’s not fair to ask but for the next few weeks, during those times that me and Dad can’t be there, can you please just make sure that little Jess and Nick aren’t alone… especially outside of the house.”

“This is about their stepdad?”

“It’s absolutely about their stepdad,” Mary narrowed her eyes, frowning out the window over the sink and towards the house next door. “Now, you know I don’t like violence, and I’d never encourage you to go around starting fights, but if you ever see that man raise his hand against those kids? You have my full permission to fuck him up.”

“ _ Mom _ ,” Dean laughed, unused to hearing that kind of language from her. 

“I’m serious. He was a mean son of a bitch back in high school when him and Beth first started dating, and he’s even worse to those kids. Supposedly he’s been going to some kind of anger management this past year, but... “ she let out a frustrated breath before finding a small smile. “Don’t you try to start a fight with him or anything, but if you get the opportunity to punch him in his self-righteous face? Do it. I’ll have your back. So will your dad.”

“So… I punch Reverend Williams and I get concert tickets?”

Mary laughed, ruffling his hair again and letting him go. “You play bodyguard for a bit, don’t hit anyone unless you have to, and I’ll buy you tickets.”

“ _ Any _ concert?”

Her nose scrunched as she thought, giving him a crooked smile. “Let’s say any concert within a three-hour drive.”

Road maps spread out in Dean’s mind, so many possibilities of where he could go, and he grinned. “Oh, it’s a deal.”

He had no idea what he was actually agreeing to. 

Taking everyone to the swimming pool hadn’t been in Dean’s mental scope of ‘bodyguard’ activities. Not that he really minded, because getting to hang out poolside, watching girls sunning themselves wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that Dean was ever going to complain about. Being at the pool for five hours on the other hand… that was a bit much for him. Sam refused to leave the water, because Jess wasn’t done swimming and in the end, the lifeguards kicked all four of them out so they could close up for the night. 

As soon as the gates closed behind them Jess took off sprinting for the park, ignoring Dean’s frustrated motioning towards the car.

“Why?” He asked no one at all. 

“She doesn’t wanna go home,” Nick sighed, watching his sister scaling the play structure, Sam fast on her heels. “She gets like this.”

Dean’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He could already tell that this would be a three against one fight. Wanting to make the best of a lame situation, he yelled, “Race you to the swings, Luci,” and took off running. 

The headstart he’d given himself was the only reason he reached the swingset first, and he was fine with his own borderline cheating. He got one good swing in, feet off the ground and the warm night air rushing through his still-damp hair, when the other boy reached him. 

Nick didn’t sit like a normal person, because he didn’t seem able to do anything like a normal person would. He stood on his swing, arms up over his head to hold onto the metal support bar. Stretched out like he was made a gap between his jeans and T-shirt, giving Dean a glimpse of paper white skin. Despite all Dean’s urgings, the other boy had flatly refused to get in the pool. Nick had found a shady place beside the vending machines and planted himself there, fully dressed, with a lap full of textbooks because he ‘didn’t want to fall behind this summer’. 

It was like spending the day with a space alien who only had the vaguest idea on how to pass as human. 

Reaching out between the swings, Dean lightly poked a finger directly into the shallow dent of Nick’s belly button, drawing a sharp squeak of protest out of the other boy. 

“You need to get some sun, man,” Dean laughed, kicking his feet so that he could keep swinging. 

“Not all of us are into frolicking around shirtless all day,” Nick kicked at Dean’s side, but it was more of a bump than the threat of real violence. Maybe to keep himself safe from further pokes, or maybe because he wanted to show off, Nick hoisted himself up, and up, hooking a leg around the support bar and climbing up to sit on top of the swingset with his feet dangling down on level with Dean’s face.

Craning his neck to look up at the boy high above him, Dean grinned. “I’m sort of starting to miss when we were kids and you had those scrawny arms and I felt like I could actually take you in a fight if I needed to.”

“That’s weird,” Nick swung his legs slowly, “because I don’t remember you ever being able to take me in a fight. In fact, I remember kicking the shit out of you multiple times.”

“It went both ways,” Dean argued, and found that for the first time he wasn’t all that bothered by those old memories being dredged up. “Look at you now though. Fuck.”

“What?”

He grinned up at the open innocence in that question. 

“I liked the obstacle courses back at the academy,” Nick explained, obviously not fully understanding why he was being grinned at. “I like climbing.”

“The  _ Academy _ ,” Dean repeated. “What the hell do you do in a military academy anyways?”

“The other guys.”

Dean’s toe caught in the bark beneath him and his swing jerked oddly to one side. “The… oh, wow. Ok. I mean…” he laughed, and it came out a little tight.

“Do you know who gets sent to military school?” Nick was watching their younger siblings playing pirates, chasing each other up and down the slide and over the monkey bars. “You get boys like me, ones who make a lot of trouble and keep getting into fights. And then you get other boys, the kind that need to be toughened up, the kind whose parents think they’re a little too feminine and need to learn to be  _ men _ .”

“So, also like you then?”

Nick snorted softly. “Yeah, I guess. Only my folks don’t know about me being… you know. I was just sent there because I ‘ _ don’t respond well to authority’ _ . If they knew about the other stuff then you’d probably be hearing about me on the news as some local teen found dead in a corn field.”

The smile died on Dean’s lips, his insides going cold. “Come on, man. Don’t joke about that kind of stuff.”

They both sat quietly, awkward, watching Sam and Jess playing as the sky started to grow dark, the lights in the parking lot starting to flicker to life. 

“I miss it there,” Nick said suddenly. He cleared his throat and kept going. “It was the best two years of my life. I wouldn’t have come back at all if it wasn’t for Jess. I came home to visit for Christmas and saw bruises on her... Zack never used to hit her when I was around. So I begged to stay here… and I really fucking hate it here.”

Knowing all the things now that he hadn’t known a few weeks back, Dean had nothing at all to say in defense of their little town in Kansas.

“You think you’ll go back?” He asked, reaching out and slapping Nick’s shoe. 

“I can’t leave Jess here.” Nick shook his head. 

This whole conversation was turning Dean’s insides. He let his shoes drag deep furrows in the bark, slowing his swinging. “Luci, with you and me and Sammy looking after her? No one’s going to hurt Jess. I promise.”

“She’s not your sister. All this isn’t your problem.”

Dean cracked a smile. “She’ll be my sister-in-law as soon as those two are old enough to tie the knot. She’s basically family. It’s just not in writing yet.”

“You really think they’ll get married?” Nick asked, swinging down from his perch, hanging by his arms for a second before dropping to the ground. 

“Course they will,” Dean stood, finding his footing on the uneven ground, grinning as a realization came to him. “Which means that you’re basically my brother-in-law.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“Sure it is. Which makes you an honorary Winchester.”

Nick gave him a strange look. “That’s  _ definitely _ not how that works.” 

“Sorry, brother. I don’t make the rules.” Dean pulled an arm around the other boy’s shoulders. “Now come on, help me get the kids in the car. I’m starving and whatever Mom made for dinner is probably getting cold.”

That was the first night that they shared a bed.

It had been a little over two weeks that Nick and Jess had been staying with them, and the sleeping arrangements between the two older boys had been pretty evenly split between one or both of them falling asleep on the couch after another late night watching infomercials. 

But apparently, during his afternoon of studying in the shade, Nick had managed to buy a joint off someone. Dean didn’t ask for details. He just appreciated the offering as the other boy followed him up to his room, closing the door behind them and pulling the little rolled bit of paper from his pocket. 

Dean grinned, going to look for a towel in his pile of dirty clothes, something to push against the base of the door. “Now see, if we’d have had this back when we were kids then maybe we could have been friends.”

“We were fourteen last time I saw you,” Nick said, rolling his eyes and sitting on the edge of the bed. “Also, you were a dick.”

“Excuse you, but I still am,” Dean laughed, coming over to join the other boy on his bed. He waited for Nick to pull out his lighter and take the first few puffs. Relaxing in the familiar good feeling of this still relatively new tradition of theirs. 

Dean lay back as he stole the joint, drawing a slow breath and feeling the heat spreading through his chest. “So, back at the  _ Academy _ ... did you have a boyfriend, or what?”

Nick started coughing.

It shouldn’t have been so easy to upset the other boy, and Dean also shouldn’t have delighted so much that effortless way he could still make Nick’s eyebrows shoot up. But it was, and he did, and Dean covered his eyes with the back of a hand for a moment while he laughed good and hard.

“Oh, shut up,” Nick finally said, pushing roughly at Dean’s shoulder.

“Ok, ok,” he swallowed down his laughter, grinning up at Nick and asking, “You said it was all troublemakers and gays out there though, so like, you hook up with anyone? Is that how you figured out you're into dudes?"

Nick rubbed his face, frustrated sounds spilling from his lips, and then, like he was giving up, he fell back to lay beside Dean and answered all those questions in a rush. "No, I didn't have a boyfriend. Yeah, I hooked up with some guys while I was there. No, that's not how I realized I was gay."

That last bit, though, that hadn’t been Dean’s exact question. 

"Oh… you're like… you’re  _ full  _ gay?" Dean rolled onto one side, looking critically at the boy beside him. He looked at the clean sharp line of Nick’s jaw and how he was perfectly at ease wearing one of Dean’s Def Leppard t-shirts. The blond could have passed for any average teenage boy. "You don't look full gay," he finally said.

"And tell me, Dean," Nick stole the joint, taking a deep breath before blowing smoke in a slow stream from the corner of his lips and asked, "What the hell does  _ full ga _ y look like?"

“Well like,” he squirmed under the scrutiny, trying to fit words around the mental image he had, “like… ok, so my uncle, the one that I was staying with, his best friend Rufus and Rufus’ husband? They’re  _ full gay _ . They wear matching shirts every damn day, and call each other ‘Papa Bear’, and they’re super into arts and music and shit, and pretty much every Sunday I skipped church to go into the city with them for antiquing.” 

“I don’t like the word antique as a verb.”

“See, that’s what I’m saying. You just don’t read as full on gay. You’re kinda’ normal.”

“I can’t tell if you’re going for an insult or a compliment here.”

“That’s all part of that patent Winchester charm,” Dean said with a wink, stealing back the little joint and laying flat so he could look up at the ceiling. “Nah. It’s cool, man. Cool that you blend in most of the time.”

“Just most of the time?”

Dean didn’t feel a need to point out that Nick would have had a hard time passing for heterosexual while making out with that random guy he brought home a few weeks back. Instead he pressed on with an obviously unanswered question, “Why didn’t you date anyone at your old school?”

With a grunt, Nick sat back up, leaning half off the bed to turn on the record player. 

The heavy baseline of The Rolling Stones’  _ Paint it Black _ filled Dean’s little room. Apparently it was Nick’s favorite, and he listened to the record single nearly every night. 

“No one cute enough?” Dean asked, watching the other boy tracing his fingers along the record player’s sharp edges. 

Nick shrugged one shoulder, focused on the spinning record. “It was a closed campus. We couldn’t leave to go get a pizza or to see a movie or anything,” Nick finally said. “But I guess there were a few guys I went on walks with more than once. There was this one guy last summer, and we’d sneak up to the roof of the dorms and talk all night. I guess that we sort of dated… only if staying up late together counts as dating.”

“Have you never had to watch a romantic comedy? That kind of thing is totally dating.”

“We never were in love or anything.”

“You don’t have to be in love for it to be a date, Luci.” Dean laughed. “Shit. If that was the rule then I’ve technically never been on a date either.”

Nick shook his head, pulling his legs up onto the bed, knees to his chest, making himself small like he did sometimes. “You don’t get it.”

“I really don’t,” Dean agreed, passing the joint up to Nick. 

“I just,” Nick rubbed a hand over his eyes, chewing on his words before letting them out, “I’ve been stupid in love with,” he paused for a particularly harsh breath, “with this one guy since… since forever. It’s kinda’ messed up everyone else for me,” his voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible over the music, “because everyone else isn’t him... Is that stupid, or what?”

Dean lay there looking up at Nick, watching Nick not looking back at him. Watching Nick taking long drags until the white paper burned down almost to his fingertips. 

“I can’t tell if that’s romantic or sad, man,” Dean finally said through the cloud that had started to settle over them. 

“It’s definitely sad,” the other boy said with a brittle laugh. 

“So what’s the deal with this guy?” Dean was wracking his brain to make a possible list of ‘cute’ guys here in Lawrence that might be the object of Nick’s affection, but it was pretty slim pickings. He shook his head and reached over to push at Nick's knees, demanding, “You tell him you like him or what?”

The horrified look on Nick’s face was answer enough.

“That bad?” Dean laughed, thinking about the first time he’d gotten up the courage to ask a girl out.

“I’ve tried to tell him. A couple of times.” Nick shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You chicken out?”

“Every fucking time,” Nick laughed again.

“Come on,” Dean slapped at the other boy’s knees again, “grow a pair. It can’t be hard. It’s gotta be just like telling a girl you like her.”

“Yeah, I’ve never done that either.” He shook his head, passing the remains of the joint down to Dean. “Here. I-I need to stop before I say something stupid. My head’s a goddamn mess.”

“ _ You’re _ a goddamn mess,” Dean tried to tease, but wasn’t sure it came out right. 

Surprisingly, Nick agreed, singing out a halfhearted, “Yeah I am,” before laying back down beside Dean. When he looked over his eyes were drooping and his pupils were blown wide. “You’re not gonna’ tell anyone. Right?”

“That you’re high?”

“That I’m gay.”

“Dude. I keep telling you I don’t give a shit that you’re into dudes. But if you keep on asking then I might go ahead and graffiti it on the water tower just to shut you up. Big ol’ letters: LUCI LIKES COCK. All caps. With a huge dick next to it.”

“You’re the huge dick next to it,” Nick repeated, wearing a crooked little smile that quickly turned into a fit of giggles.

And Dean wasn’t much of a giggler, but with how hazy his mind felt, he couldn’t help himself. Laughing softly, his chest feeling light and warm as he curled towards Nick, grinning so hard his cheeks hurt.

He woke up in basically the same position, tucked along Nick’s side, sweat-damp on the back of his neck and the small of his back. The room was too hot and stuffy for how close they were laying, but weirdly Dean didn’t care. He stayed there until Nick stirred awake, and they both looked at one another awkwardly before getting up for breakfast. 

It wasn’t something that they talked about. 

It was, however, something that they repeated the next night. 

And the next.

To be honest, it was only slightly more comfortable than it was weird, but Dean figured that as long as neither of them decided to ruin it by talking about it then it just wouldn’t have to become a big deal. It wasn’t like Dean didn’t share a bed with Sammy when they went on family trips. This was basically the same thing. Except they hadn’t been doing it since they were kids, and Nick was the same age as Dean, and Nick sometimes hooked up with guys―but with his self confessed life long crush on some random dude, Nick’s sexuality wasn’t exactly threatening to Dean. 

Plus, the guy was just really freaking comfortable to sleep next to. 

He never snored.

He hardly rolled around.

And most importantly, he never mentioned or complained that Dean was a close sleeper. 

Which he really should have done. 

Nick should have drawn some big old lines in the sand before they started getting as close as they did. Dean did best with clear boundaries, and that was the one thing that the two of them never had. 

  
  
  
  


**\---- Late July, 2004** \----

“And you double checked that you packed everything?”

Dean rolled his eyes, repeating “Yes, Mom,” for the millionth time in the last five minutes. 

“And you boys promise that you won’t drive if you get too tired?” She asked, also for the millionth time. 

“I promise not to drive at all,” Nick chimed in, leaning against the kitchen counter. 

Dean laughed. 

Mary frowned at them. She’d been frowning all morning. She was good at worrying, even over stupid things. 

“Come on, Mom,” Dean leaned beside Nick, copying the other boy’s posture of elbows on the counter and chin in his hands. “I’ve done overnight trips before.”

“But not on your own.”

“We’ll be fine. Promise.” He’d promised so many times over the past week.

It had taken an awful lot of convincing to get Mary to agree to let them go to a concert all the way out in Colorado, especially since it overshot her rule of a three-hour drive. It was more like a five-hour drive, over state lines, that would keep both boys out overnight. Mom had made them pack a tent and a couple sleeping bags, even though Dean secretly planned to just pull over when he got tired and Nick and he would simply sleep in the car. 

“I’d just feel a lot better about this if an adult was going with,” she fretted, drumming her nails against the counter. 

It wouldn’t be his first long car trip. He’d been responsible for driving Bobby’s car to and from hunting trips on multiple occasions. However, his uncle had always been there in the car with him, which definitely made this adult free trip something special.

Dad smoothed a hand over Mom’s back. “We’ve both got work tomorrow morning, and the boys are practically eighteen.”

“They’re both only  _ sixteen _ , which is not the same,” she batted his hand away. “Dean’s only had his license for a few months, and you know that car is a wreck. I’m allowed to worry.”

“Are you forgetting how many long drives we used to take in the Impala?”

“That was almost twenty years ago, John. That car hasn’t been on the highway since the boys were still in carseats.”

“I checked her over, changed all the fluids, the tires aren’t even a year old.” Dad pulled his arms around her, kissing the top of her head and flashing a warm smile at Dean and Nick. “The boys will be fine.”

Dean still hadn’t gotten comfortable with Dad’s softer side, and he still wasn’t sure why Jess and Nick always seemed to bring it out of the old man. It probably just had something to do with the fact that the extra two kids had only been living under their roof for two months, which just wasn't enough time for Dad to settle into his usual hard-ass ways. Or maybe it was because Jess helped Mom to make Dad’s favorite cookies every Sunday afternoon.

Dean didn’t get it, and he didn’t feel like he really needed to, because Dad was letting him take the Impala out of state to go see Metallica in concert.

That was the real important thing here.

“You have enough money for food?” Mary seemed to be doing her best to ignore the man hugging her, not letting it get in the way of frowning at the boys.

“Yes,” Dean sighed. 

Mom clasped her hands together, obviously still not assured. “And you’ve got my cell phone. I charged the battery all last night so it should be fine. But keep it off except for emergencies, and to call me when you get to the concert―and when you leave the concert. I don’t care how late it is. And call me and let me know when you stop for the night so I know where you are. Ok?”

Dean promised  _ again _ . He knew the rules. Nick had the chunky little Nokia phone in his back pocket, along with change for a payphone just in case. 

It still took another half an hour for them to get out the door, even with Dad on their team assuring Mom that everything would be fine. 

Almost dancing with excitement, Dean pulled Nick out towards the old black car parked on the street. He’d been looking forward to the concert for weeks, and the fact that he’d somehow managed to sweet-talk his way into borrowing the Impala overnight made the whole thing that much sweeter. 

“Pick up your feet, Lu.” Dean tugged harder on the other boy’s wrist, fighting down the irritation that they weren’t already in the car. “I wanna see this town in my rearview mirror. Come on, come on, come on.”

Nick was dragging his feet though, moving at a snail’s pace. 

“Did we forget something? What?” Dean turned back and frowned.

All Nick’s attention was on the house next door, like he didn’t even notice that Dean was tugging on his arm. It wasn’t hard to figure out what had caught his attention though.

The good reverend Williams was standing on his front porch, watching the boys. 

It’s not like Dean had ever liked the guy. How are you supposed to like an adult whose sole purpose was to get people up far too early on Sunday mornings, and then stand around for an hour lecturing them on how terrible they were? Recently Dean had learned to actually straight-up hate the guy though.

Dean bore his teeth. “How long do you think he’s been back?”

“Like a day or two ago.”

“That sucks. I’d been hoping his plane would crash or something.” Dean grumbled, feeling his good mood wilting. 

“Yeah. Me too,” Nick agreed.

Mr. Williams had been gone for nearly a week, off at some sort of conference, which had been great because it had meant that Nick and Jess were able to go into their own house to get anything they wanted instead of having to have John go for them. 

“Come on,” Dean urged, pulling at Nick once more. “Forget him and let’s go.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled with some hesitation, letting himself be dragged to the car.

Dean wasn’t going to let one son of a bitch ruin their trip, and he waved goodbye to Mr. Williams with a single finger, earning himself a steely glare as they drove away.

“We don’t have to come back, right?” Nick asked softly once they’d turned down a street and their houses were hidden from view. 

“Not tonight,” Dean promised. It was the best he could offer. “Let’s forget about him. We’re going to see fucking Metallica tonight. Come on. Put a tape in the deck and get the map out, my man.”

It took nearly an hour on the road for Nick to shake himself free of whatever dismal thoughts kept him quiet as he rode shotgun. By the time they hit the state lines though, Nick was laughing and joking in that same comfortable way that he’d settled into over the last two months that he’d been staying with the Winchesters. 

By the time they made it to the stadium, Nick was almost unrecognizable, his good mood seeming to correspond directly to his distance from home. Dean couldn’t blame the guy. Dean had left all his own friends back in North Dakota, and the only thing in Kansas for him was his parents and his brother. Nick had a whole lot less than that to keep him around. 

Those were things that Dean didn’t want to think about though. Not right then. 

Instead, they grabbed burgers for dinner then got to go wait in line to get into the stadium, and Dean made the off-handed offer that maybe in the spring the two of them could apply to some of the same colleges, and if things worked out then maybe they could get an apartment together or something. It was a very open-ended offer, really more daydreaming out loud than making any actual concrete plans. It brought a light to Nick’s eyes though, a happy, million miles away, kind of light that kept him grinning until the concert started. 

Hours later, as they made their way through the parking lot, both on an adrenaline high, Dean was feeling far too amazing for his own good. So much so that when Nick suggested that they stop and get a drink, Dean eagerly agreed. 

Having only small second thoughts when he pulled the Impala over in front of a place that apparently Nick had seen on their drive in. 

“It’s a bar,” Dean felt his movements slowing, keys hanging loosely in his grip. 

“Well, yeah,” Nick was unbuckling and opening his door. “Where else would we get a drink?”

“A Seven-Eleven?” He said uneasily in the empty car. Watching the other boy bounding up the front steps to the sketchy looking place, Dean forced himself into action. Not that he was  _ against _ a bar necessarily, but the fact remained that they were both only sixteen. Tall sixteen-year-olds, yes. But still just sixteen. Legally they weren't allowed in. 

No one stopped them at the door. 

And Dean tried to keep his steps casual and light as he hurried to catch up with his friend who was leaning against the bar like he was a regular here. 

“Two cokes, extra ice,” Nick was ordering, pressing a five-dollar bill onto the counter.

The bartender, a slightly older woman with speckles of grey in her very short hair, looked up at both the boys long and hard before taking the cash and pulling out two glasses. 

“I don’t want any trouble from you boys,” she said as she pushed the soda their way. “But you look thirsty, so drink and get on your way, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nick said in that polite way that he always did when talking to adults. 

Dean feared the other boy’s confidence, or maybe respect was a better word. Either way, he followed Nick to a table near the front and sat down. He sipped on his coke, grateful for something to drink after hours of shouting his lungs out. “So, this is a bar?” 

“You’ve never been to one?” Nick asked over the top of his drink.

“No. Son of a cop, and also only sixteen. And you’ve never been to one either, so don’t ask me like that, bitch.” Dean got a small grin, “We’re going to get in so much trouble if my folks find out.”

“Good thing neither of us are going to tell them,” Nick grinned back.

Dean lightly kicked the other boy’s legs under the table. “How is it that  _ you’re _ the trouble maker in this situation?” 

“Because you’re not the only one allowed to make trouble? You don’t own the rights to trouble.”

He laughed, picking up an ice cube from his glass and popping it in his mouth. “You ever seen Footloose?”

“No?”

Dean rolled his eyes. This was a recurring problem that he’d started noticing over the last month. Nick had basically seen no moves. His parents didn’t even own a TV. It meant that the two of them had a lot of catching up to do. 

“I’ll add it to the list,” Dean smiled and shook his head. “It’s got Kevin Bacon, long haired guy from Tremors, and he moves to this awful little town in the middle of nowhere that’s outlawed dancing.”

Nick snorted softly, shaking his head like he wanted Dean to keep going.

“And like, he meets the minister’s daughter, and this girl wears red boots and smokes and sleeps around, all just to piss her dad off.”

Resting an elbow on the table and his chin against his fist, Nick sighed. “Are you saying I’m the girl in this movie?”

“You’re totally the girl in this movie. You’d absolutely be the one sneaking out of town to dance with Kevin Bacon.”

“I’d do a lot more than dance with Kevin Bacon,” Nick mumbled into his drink, sending Dean into a fit of laughter. 

“Eww,” Dean teased. “He’s like thirty or something now.”

“So.”

“So he’s like twice your age.”

“I was with a guy who was twenty-seven. That’s not much different than thirty.”

That sobered Dean up. “Really?” He asked, his voice dropping to a whisper. It wasn’t often that Nick managed to catch him off guard, so that was definitely one point for his friend.

“Yeah,” he shrugged, looking desperately like he wanted to make this casual and not a big deal, squirming a little under Dean’s heavy look. “It’s not a big deal. He was just one of the drill instructors back at the academy… and it only happened one time.” 

Dean was caught awkwardly between congratulating his friend and being weirded out at the idea of a teacher making a move on a student. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” Nick pouted, kicking Dean in the shins. “He was handsome and it took me like a month to talk him into it. It was one awesome night, and then he transferred himself to a different school like a coward.”

“How did I ever think you were a wimp when we were kids?” Dean finally asked. “You scare me sometimes, man. Also, I might need to get advice from you at some point on how to seduce a teacher, because that’s kind of awesome.”

“Thank you,” Nick did a little curtsy from his seat. “Now I’m going to leave you to sit and marvel at my awesomeness. I’ll be right back.” He got up, heading towards the restroom sign and leaving Dean to guard their sodas.

“You boys aren’t from around here,” a voice asked from the next table over and Dean turned in his chair to see who was talking. It was a guy, not quite as old as Dad, glasses and an open smile.

Dean smiled back. “Nah. We’re just in for the Metallica concert.”

“Yeah?” The guy flashed a small grin. “I hear they’re awesome live. A friend of mine got tickets but I couldn’t go.”

“Bad luck, man. It was fucking amazing.”

“Yeah?” The guy slid over to the empty chair next to Nick’s seat. “Did they play new stuff or was it mostly older songs?”

Dean was happy to chat, happy to meet another person who appreciated a great band. 

And when the guy offered to buy Dean a refill on his drink, Dean didn’t think anything strange about it. He came from a small town, and the friendliness he was used to had given Dean a few naive blind spots he didn’t know he had. 

The guy brought a fresh soda for Dean back to the table, along with something in a smaller glass for himself. They kept chatting, Dean talking about the long drive they had ahead of them tonight, but he wasn’t worried. He was still so pumped from the concert he didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep even if he wanted. 

Nick came back, and Dean didn’t even notice his friend approaching the table, he was just suddenly standing beside Dean’s chair, hands on both Dean’s shoulders. 

“Hey,” Dean craned his neck up to grin at the other boy. “This is Allen. Allen, my buddy Nick.”

“We’ve got to get going,” Nick said sharply where a polite greeting should go. 

“We do?” Dean blinked. “Alright? Just let me finish my drink.”

“Did you drink any of this?” Nick pushed Dean’s soda away with a sharp poke.

“Not yet,” Dean turned in his seat. “What the hell, man.”

Allen spoke up, “You guys don't have to be in such a rush to leave.”

“Yeah. We do.” Nick pulled on Dean’s arm, keeping his eyes on the stranger. “We need to get headed home.”

“I live just down the block,” Allen smiled, “I know it’s a long drive you boys have ahead of you, if you two wanted to relax for a bit before you get back on the road.” 

“Sorry, man,” Dean apologised, letting himself get plucked up from his seat. “Apparently we’ve got to go. Thanks for the drink though.”

Nick physically dragged Dean from the bar, not leaving any room for questions or arguments. 

“Wait,” Dean grumbled as he struggled to keep his footing down the steps. “Fucking wait a second, Luci. What the hell is wrong? What’s the hurry?”

“You didn’t drink anything he brought you, right?” Nick stopped tugging, crowding Dean instead a look of worry lurking behind his frown. 

“I already told you no. It was just soda though. Even if I’d had some I’d be fine to drive. Stop being so weird.”

“That creep put something in your drink.”

“What? When?”

Nick ran his hands through his hair, blowing out a sharp breath. “I was leaving the bathroom, and this guy I was with noticed Mr. Creeper putting something in your soda before he brought it over to you.”

“Why would…?” Dean trailed off, confused for a number of reasons. “What do you mean you were with _ this guy _ in the bathroom?”

“He was cute and hell of a lot closer to my age and less creepy than the guy trying to drug you,” he sighed. “You need to be more careful, Dean.”

“Careful of what? Guys buying me soda?”

“Of guys roofying your soda, you idiot.”

“Guys don’t get roofied,” Dean snorted, shaking his head. “Come on man. That kind of thing doesn’t happen to guys.”

“It does to dumb stupid pretty boys who wander into gay bars and let creepy guys buy them drinks.”

“This is a gay bar?”

“Of course it’s a gay bar,” Nick raised his arms in frustration.

Dean frowned up at the building, finding nothing at all that made it look ‘gay’. “How can you tell?”

“Because gay magic, Dean,” he rolled his eyes, “and also because the fucking rainbow heart in the window next to the door.”

Dean glanced over. It was a small sticker, but if he was looking for it then yeah, it was actually kind of obvious. “Oh… yeah. I guess that makes sense.”

“Come on. Let’s get going, just in case that creep decides to come out and see if we’re still here.”

He nodded, agreeing, but feeling detached from all this. Dean settled in behind the wheel and glanced over at Nick. “Did he really put something in my drink?”

Nick let out a long breath between his teeth, fidgeting in his seat. 

“What, um…” Dean frowned, realizing he actually didn’t want to ask what the guy in the bar had planned to do with him. There was absolutely no good answer. He suddenly felt dirty, his skin crawling like there were ants just under the surface. “Eww,” he finally managed, hoping that that rightfully summed up the whole experience. 

“Eww,” Nick agreed.

“But, you’re ok, right?” Dean looked over. “I mean… weird guy in the bathroom and all...”

“I’m fine,” he blew off the concern. “We just kissed for a bit, and I started it. I also decided when I was done. He was a perfect gentleman.”

The wording made Dean chuckle. “A gentleman who makes out with strangers in bar bathrooms?”

“Yeah,” Nick offered the smallest smile imaginable, the neon lights in the bar window casting lines of bright colors over his face. “Now come on. Stop fussing and let’s get out of here.”

Dean wasn’t fussing. 

He was perfectly average amounts of worried.

But he didn’t think he could explain that to Nick. Nick didn’t like people making a big deal over him no matter how well deserved a big deal might be. 

“Alright, Luci. Get that map back out and tell me how the hell to get to the highway.”

They made it out to the middle of absolutely nowhere, nearly an hour since Dean had seen any city lights, and the dashed lines on the highway were starting to blur together, when Nick suggested that they pull over for the night. 

“I’m fine, man,” Dean yawned, blinking at the road and realizing that he was driving in the oncoming traffic lane. Thankfully there was no one else around, and he quickly got the car back to the right side of the road. “Or, you know, maybe time for some sleep.”

“You wanna call Mom and tell her we’re stopping for the night, or should I?”

“You can. You’ve got the map, you know where the hell we are.” Dean shook his head, trying to keep his eyes focused. He spotted a turn off and took the dirt road around a few slow curves and into a dip between hills. 

“Yeah, Mrs. Winchester. It’s me. We’re fine. Just pulling over for the night,” Nick said into the borrowed cell phone. “Um, we’re… give me a sec,” he turned on the overhead light, squinting at the map sprawled over his lap, “we’re about forty miles west of Wichita, parked next to… um, I think a train track bridge. Yeah. Ok. I’ll tell him… good night.” He hung up the phone and turned it off, glancing over at Dean. “Mom says she loves you, and get home safe.” 

Dean rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother trying to hide his grin. “She worries way too much.”

“Seeing as you almost got drugged and kidnapped tonight, maybe she worries just the right amount for her dumbass son,” Nick teased, shoving the map into the glovebox before getting out of the car.

Scoffing, Dean got out and walked around to the trunk. “No way, man.” For no reasoning at all that Dean could come up with. Just no. “You think we should bother with the tent?”

“And miss out on all this sky?”

It was a weird question, and Dean glanced over in time to see the other boy standing with his arms out wide, turning in a slow circle as he looked up at the stars. “You’re so weird sometimes,” Dean said with a laugh.

Nick shot him a grin and made his way to the trunk, pulling out one of the rolled-up sleeping bags. They laid out their bed in the tall grass, unzipping both bags and laying them flat to make one big square to sleep on. Dean kicked off his shoes and sank down, watching the other boy fiddling around in the trunk of the car, pulling out something before closing it all up. 

“What've you got there, Lu?” Dean asked, folding his arms behind his head and squinting at the bottle in the other boy’s hands. “Gatorade?”

“A Gatorade bottle full of vodka,” Nick announced, sinking down onto the makeshift bed beside Dean. 

Dean sat up, feeling his eyes going wide. 

“Well more like a fourth full of vodka. I didn’t want anyone to notice I’d taken some.”

“You sneaky little jerk,” Dean laughed. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“Because now we’re done driving for the night and it doesn’t matter if we get a little drunk.”

“Or a lot drunk,” he said, eyeing the plastic bottle and the clear bit of liquid at the bottom. Back at Uncle Bobby’s, Dean had stolen a beer or five, and at least one quick sip of whiskey, but that was it. He’d never tried vodka. He’d never been brave enough to try and steal anything from the bottles on top of the fridge back home, because he was positive that somehow Dad would just  _ know _ and no alcohol buzz was going to be worth the lecture he’d get. 

It turned out vodka was a hell of a lot stronger than beer, even though it didn’t taste like much of anything other than a pleasant burning that settled like glowing coals in Dean’s gut. Though it felt a little different, and the scenery had significantly changed, this wasn’t far from one of their normal nights together. Laughing and laying close and feeling like they were the only two people in the whole world.

Dean hadn’t realized how hard the liquor had hit him until he was struggling to understand what Nick was telling him. 

“W-what? Say it again?”

Nick took a breath so deep it felt like a wonder that there was any air left for Dean. “I said we don’t have to go home. We can just run away.”

“And go where?”

“Does it matter?”

Dean closed his eyes. “Where would you want to go? Like, if you could go anywhere at all, where would you go?”

“Washington state,” Nick answered without missing a beat. 

Cracking an eye open, Dean looked over. “What’s in Washington?”

“My dad,” he sighed, smiling up at the sky. 

“You’ve got a dad?”

“Shut up. Of course I do.”

“Has he ever come by?”

Nick made a small, rough sound before saying, “No. He’s some deadbeat writer who’s never even called me on the phone… but he sends me a birthday card every year with twenty bucks in it.” His laugh sounded strained. “So that’s something. Right?”

Dean picked up and shook their empty bottle before dropping it back down in the grass. 

“When I was little I’d make these big plans to run away from home and go out there to live with him,” Nick said softly, his words running together in a way they didn’t usually when they’d been smoking. “I know he probably wants nothing to do with a mistake like me, but… but it was a nice daydream.”

“A mistake?” Dean made a face. “You’re not a mistake, Lu.”

“Yeah I am,” He stretched out long, rolling onto a side to look at Dean. “Mom got knocked up by some random guy in her poetry club while she was eighteen, her first semester away at college. She never wanted me, and her husband sure as hell takes every chance he can to point it out.”

“Fuck that noise,” Dean said louder than he’d intended and he watched Nick’s eyes widen a touch. “And fuck them. They don’t deserve you.”

Nick laughed.

“I mean it, man. Fuck them. If they don’t want you, fuck them. We’ll keep you.”

“I wish it worked like that,” Nick whispered, bowing his head so that his forehead touched Dean’s, but only for a moment. “Mom’ll be back by the end of the week and I’ll have to go home.”

“You don’t  _ have _ to. Mom and Dad’ll let you stay.”

Nick shook his head, flopping onto his back, arms outstretched to play with the long grass. “We both know it’s not gonna’ work like that. It’ll be just like last time. Zack will have to do some kind of anger management. Him and Mom might try couple’s therapy again, and then it will go right back to how it was.” 

Dean wanted to argue, but it was hard when the other boy’s words came so hard and matter of factly. 

“It always goes right back to how it was,” Nick’s voice had gone flat, that defeated tone weighing down his words like it hadn’t been able to for weeks. 

Laying there, listening to his friend, Dean realized that the Nick he’d come to know over the past two months was slipping away, going back into hiding. Soon enough all that would be left was that hard-eyed, unsmiling boy who lived next door and always wore long sleeves to hide the bruises on his arms.

“It’ll be different this time. My parents know now,” Dean tried to explain. 

“Your parents’ve known for months. Mary was the ER doctor almost every time I had to go in after I came back from the academy. She knew. She sent your dad over to check on us. He knew. It didn’t change anything.”

Dean sat up, fighting back the wave of dizziness that threatened him. “But it’ll be different this time,” he insisted stubbornly. “You’re here with me. Jess is safe at home with my folks and Sammy. It’s already different.”

Nick pushed himself up, copying how Dean was sitting, forcing a knifelike smile as he said, “I love you, Dean. I really fucking do. But you’re dumb as hell sometimes.”

“Shut up, man,” Dean gave Nick a gentle push, laughing softly at the awkward feeling that had started to solidify under the warm haze of the vodka.

They sat in silence for a bit, listening to the crickets and the occasional distant woosh of a car passing on the highway behind them. Dean thought he heard a train whistle and he wondered how close it would get to them, if it would eventually come rolling down the tracks that they were camping next to.

“You’ll take care of Jess though… right?” Nick asked suddenly. “When I’m not there you’ll take care of her?”

“Sure,” Dean promised.

“Say it like you mean it,” Nick demanded. 

Dean sat up straight, putting a hand over his heart and using his most serious voice, “I, Dean Winchester, do solemnly swear that I’ll take care of Jesica Williams when you’re not there, for better or worse, til death do us part.”

“God, you’re such a ham,” Nick’s smile softened as he laughed. 

Seeing that smile counted as a win in Dean’s book. His friend hadn’t fully retreated. Nick was still here with Dean, even if for only a little while longer. 

Grinning, he lay back down, throwing an arm over his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch the way the stars overhead were spinning. He heard Nick getting up and stumbling off through the grass, probably to get something out of the car or to take a piss. 

It had been a hell of a concert and an amazing drive, free from any adults or responsibilities, and though he wouldn’t come right out and say it, Dean was glad that he’d talked Nick into coming along.

That train was getting closer, Dean could hear the whistle louder now, and he wondered if they should move the car and sleep somewhere else a little quieter. He opened his eyes and rolled over to ask Nick his feelings on it, only to see that Nick hadn’t come back. 

“Hey,” Dean pushed himself up to his elbows, blinking into the crisp nighttime shadows and the sloping landscape on either side. He didn’t see his friend at all. “Hey, Lu, did you go lay down in the car?”

No answer.

Frowning, Dean unsteadily got to his feet, not trusting the way his legs didn’t seem to want to hold him up. It was all just softly swaying grass and rolling hills.

“Luci!” Dean raised his voice. “You throwing up or something?”

It was hard to properly worry at the sudden disappearance of the other boy, the alcohol in Dean’s system making his thoughts slow and sloppy. He turned in a lopsided circle, trying to figure out where on earth his friend could have wandered off too, especially seeing as there was nothing out here to hide behind. 

The sound of the train whistle drew Dean’s eyes upward, towards the bridge, and the very sobering silhouette of someone sitting up there on the tracks.

“Nick?!” Dean scrambled up the hill, his bare feet slipping and seeming to easily find every pointy little rock hiding in the darkness. “What the hell are you doing?”

The other boy was sitting how he did sometimes, with his legs tucked up, looking very small. He didn’t turn his head to look down at Dean who was struggling to make it up the hill, and his voice when he spoke was hollow and worn, “I can’t do it.”

“Can’t do what?” Dean spit out the words as he dragged himself up higher.

“I can’t go back to that shithole of a town,” Nick said in that same empty way. He still didn’t turn his head as he spoke, his gaze fixed straight forward at the empty tracks ahead of him. 

“Get off the goddamned tracks!” Dean demanded.

“I don’t care if this makes me a coward,” was Nick’s soft reply, “I really don’t. I’d rather be dead than go back.”

“You crazy son of a bitch!” Dean crested the hill, his heart pounding against his ribs. He looked warily up and down the tracks, trying to figure out what direction the train was coming from, and seeing a distant light that was growing far too fast. “Get your ass down from there!”

“It’s fine,” Nick insisted, even going so far to force the edges of his mouth up into a smile. “You’ll take care of Jess for me. You promised.”

There was no way that Dean was going to let this go any further. If he knew anyone crazy enough to stay there on the tracks, staring down a freight train, then it was Nick. Standing there yelling at the guy wasn’t going to make him move and Dean wasn’t about to waste any more time that they didn’t have. 

Before there was a chance for things to get any more dramatic, before there needed to be any last-minute save, Dean stormed over the tracks and grabbed the other boy.

Only problem was that Nick had made up his mind. 

And Nick didn’t want to be moved.

Dean hadn’t been expecting a fight, and the instant that Nick took a swing at him, Dean realized how stupid that had been to lower his guard.

On the bright side, however, their tussle rolled them off the tracks and down to the relative safety at the bottom of the little hill. 

Battered and breathless from the fall, tasting grass and dirt and blood, Dean struggled to rise and to get his fists up. Apparently the fight had been short-lived though, because Nick was laying flat on his back, laughing. Laughing so hard he was weezing.

“You― you drunk ass son of a bitch!” Dean threw a handful of dirt at the other boy, anger rapidly replacing his fear. “You scared the shit out of me. It’s not funny.” 

Nick kept on laughing, tears starting to creep from the corners of his eyes.

“You’re such an asshole,” Dean threw more grass as it was his only weapon. “Yeah, keep fucking laughing,  _ Luci _ . I’m going to get some sleep.” He nearly managed to stand, hobbling back to the sleeping bag, his knees aching from their roll down the hill. 

He laid himself down, watching the sky, listening to his friend laughing and silently hating Nick just a little―right until he realized that the soft noises coming from the other boy were no longer laugher. 

It took a lot more energy than he thought he had left, but Dean managed to drag himself to his feet one last time, stumbling, half crawling, no dignity, only good intentions, all the way back to Nick.

Dean didn’t know what to say as he lay down in the grass beside his friend, pulling his arms tightly around Nick’s shoulders while the other boy sobbed like it was the only thing he knew how to do.

  
  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

That was all too much to try and cram into words though. 

That was months and months of really good and really bad that Dean didn’t think he could put into a simple story for Lisa. 

Even just dragging up those old memories was enough to make Dean’s chest tight, and talking difficult. He silently hated how Lisa accepted it all though. The woman was patience embodied (she’d have to be to put up with Dean for as long as she had), and she could simply sit there on the hotel bed beside him, rubbing his back until he was ready. 

He pressed a hand to his eyes, wondering why he’d let himself drink so much. It’s not like those bottles of weak beer from the mini-fridge were enough to make any of this any easier.

“I don’t even know if you remember,” he started with an unsteady breath, “but back in our first year in college I had this essay that you helped me with, this ‘why did I pick psychology as my major’ five-thousand-word nightmare of an essay.”

Lisa hummed thoughtfully. “I think so? Wasn’t it,” she faltered, making a soft ‘ _ oh’ _ sound before asking, “oh no, was he the boy that you wrote about?”

Dean nodded faintly.

She’d stopped rubbing his back, joining him in silently staring at the patterns on the carpet.

“You think Sammy’d be pissed if I just went back home and missed his wedding?” Dean asked quietly, knowing the answer before Lisa could give it.

“Don’t you dare,” she warned. “Your baby brother is the sweetest bean and he’s so damn excited to have you here, and you’re not going to upset him by bailing on his wedding just because you’ve got abandonment issues.”

“They aren’t abandonment issues,” Dean was quick to argue, even as cringed at the diagnosis that hit a little too close to home. 

“Your  _ whatever _ issues,” She sighed. “These next few days aren’t about you, Dean. It’s all about two very sweet, happy people who are in love and getting married. And you’re going to just have to suck it up, do your best to ignore that tasty snack of a man from your childhood, and get through this.”

Dean wished it could be that easy. 

He also wished Lisa would never call Nick a ‘snack’ ever again.

He wished a lot of things right then, but first and foremost, he wished he had something a little stronger to drink. 

  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, my lovely late night friends <3  
> It's nearly midnight here, but for you perhaps it's a nice Saturday morning and you're waking up to this (accidentally) long chapter update (seriously though, rereading it for last minute corrections sort of horrified me with just how long this chapter actually is).
> 
> Hope you all are doing well.   
> Or at least as well as you can be in this apocalypse :[

\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

The wedding rehearsal the day before had had John Winchester standing in to walk Jess down the aisle, and she’d been beautiful with her wide grin, and flip flops and jeans, as she carefully measured her steps up to the altar where Sam waited with his best man by his side. 

The actual wedding was a different story though. 

Nick walked his baby sister down the aisle, taking the place where her own father would have been if life had gone differently. Nick stood head and shoulders taller than Jess, his dark blue Air Force uniform looking oddly right beside her layers and layers of fluffy white dress. And to Dean’s eyes, they both looked like perfected versions of their younger selves. Happy. Hopeful. Beautiful.

It wasn’t a long ceremony. 

Which made it easier for Dean to follow Lisa’s advice to ignore his childhood friend. The fact that Sam was grinning like a complete fool the whole time helped as a pleasant distraction too. 

It was after the ceremony, when everyone went outside to the steps of the church to do pictures that the problem started. The photographer didn’t know about Dean and Nick’s history, and why would she? Sam and Jess didn’t even know half of what had happened between the two boys when they were kids. 

And that’s how Dean found himself standing with Sam and Dad and Nick for far more photos than anyone actually needed to take. They were all officially family now, which meant they were obligated to smoosh together and smile for photos.

So much of Dean’s focus was on not paying attention to the other man, that when he was directed by the photographer to take a step to the left he didn’t even think about it and accidentally bumped into the man he was trying so hard to pretend didn’t exist.

“Sorry,” Dean mumbled out of reflex, looking once and only once at the man whose shoe he’d just stepped on. 

Smiling and distracted, Nick glanced over. 

For only the briefest moment their eyes met, but in that single fraction of a second before Nick could frown and turn away, all of Dean’s insides twisted into knots because that crooked little grin belonged to the same stupid boy he’d fallen for a lifetime ago.

  
  
  


**\---- Mid August, 2004** \----

It was one of those seemingly endless summer nights, when the sun took forever to dip below the horizon and the air was heavy and stagnant. Sweat had pooled at the small of Dean’s back, his temples wet, and he was starting to wonder if a third rinse off shower of the day would even be worth the effort it would take to get off his bed.

He flipped through the channels on the little TV that he’d begged his parents to let him keep in his room, hoping for something to watch with a lot of explosions or at least a little side-boob, but finding only sitcom reruns and infomercials. The curtains beside his bed very suddenly parted, and what Dean initially ignored assuming it to be only a gust of wind, became a short lived moment of horror as long legs slid from the otherside of the window and down onto the mattress. Nick’s lanky form slid onto the bed and Dean let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“You need to learn to knock or something, man,” Dean sat up, frowning and running his hands through his hair, only slightly self-con scious . 

Nick only rolled his eyes and hopped off the bed saying, “And you need to learn that when you’re having special ‘ _ alone time _ ’ to either close your curtains all the way, or at least sit up a bit more so I can properly enjoy the show.”

Dean kicked the empty air where his friend had just been, almost certain he was being teased, but only almost. A tickle of embarrassment crept up his spine and Dean grabbed the magazines off his bed and shoved them under the mattress. 

Nick didn’t seem to notice or care about Dean’s sudden guilty movements, busying himself instead with going straight into Dean’s closet, nearly vanishing behind the winter coats and flannels.

Nothing about this was unusual. The boy from next door was over at least five nights a week to hang out and listen to music and just not be in his own house, and really after the months of him living with the Winchesters it felt more natural to have him there than not.

“Everything ok, man?” Dean asked, the same as he did every night. 

“Yeah,” Nick called back, emerging from the clutter with Dean’s stash. “I just needed to get out of the house for a bit.”

“How did bible study go?” Dean asked, turning on the bedside light and squinting critically at his friend. 

There were some indifferent sounds as the other boy came to sit down on the floor and lean against the bed. 

Dean refused to accept that answer though, and demanded, “Let’s see your arms.”

Sighing, Nick held his arms up for inspection. It had become something of a routine for them, despite all of the boy’s protests against it. Quietly complaining, he let Dean smooth hands over his arms from fingertips to shoulders, checking for fresh bruises. 

“I’m fine,” Nick pulled away, hunching his shoulders. “He’s still leaving me alone.”

Which is what Dean liked to hear, even if he didn’t fully trust the answer. “Show me your back.”

Nick looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing. “I’m  _ fine _ .”

That exasperated expression was the most direct route to Dean’s guilty feelings. It had been two weeks since Nick and Jess had moved back home, and so far nothing bad had happened, but Dean was convinced it was only a matter of time. He was pretty sure that Nick knew that too, just like he was sure that these regular check-ups were more of a bad reminder than any kind of help. 

Dean offered a small grin like an apology. “Dude, I know you’re  _ fine _ . I’m just hoping for a little striptease,” he joked, sliding forward on the bed to dangle his legs over Nick’s shoulders and ruffle his hands through the other boy’s hair. 

Chuckling, Nick looked away. Ignoring the way that Dean was looming over him, he rolled two joints for them, putting them both between his lips to light them before passing one upward. 

A little flash of color caught Dean’s eye and he grabbed hold of his friend’s hand. “Dude! Did you paint your nails?”

“Jess did,” he shrugged it off, pulling his hand away. “Your mom bought her some nail polish when they went shopping earlier today.”

“And you just let her paint your nails?” Dean laughed.

“Look, it’s the first time she’s ever had nail polish. She was excited. She painted all her fingers and toes and wanted to keep going,” Nick made excuses, softly adding, “I’ll clean it off later tonight.”

It all sounded like a very valid story, but Dean saw the way that his friend was holding up his hands and admiring the glossy polish.

“Oh my god,” Dean laughed, “you’re so damn gay it’s adorable.”

Nick let his head fall back, looking up at Dean as he blew smoke. “You’re really gonna call me gay when you’re the one with a guy’s head between your legs?” 

Laughing in a way that sounded a little off to his own ears, Dean tucked his legs back up onto the bed. “Alright, alright, you win that one, Luci.”

“ _ That one _ ?” He snorted softly. “I  _ always _ win. Always, always,” Nick hummed to himself. 

“I go easy on you,” Dean argued, folding his arms.

Nick mumbled something too low to hear before settling back in and relaxing. He watched TV, and Dean watched him, thinking to himself that for the first time since this summer started, it looked like Nick might be developing a bit of a tan. 

He lay down, stretching out on his stomach and putting his face beside his friend’s so they could watch the TV screen from the same height, and so that he could more easily hook a finger into the collar of Nick’s shirt and pull it to the side.

“What are you doing, weirdo?” One of Nick’s shoulders came up to his ear as he leaned away from the touch. 

“Checking out those tan lines, Lu. Have you been swimming?”

“In the afternoons, yeah.”

Dean huffed softly. “When I’m at work?”

“When you’re at work,” Nick agreed. “Zach’s usually at church, and Mom’s off doing errands. I have the whole house to myself and I get to just lay out there and float. It’s amazing.”

It was mostly just odd jobs that kept Dean busy in the afternoons. One of Dad’s friends owned an auto body shop and Dean got to strip paint and run errands for the shop. It wasn’t great work, but it had given him enough pocket change to buy the secondhand TV sitting on his desk. Apparently though, it was getting in the way of his chances to go next door and swim during the hotter parts of the day. 

“Well, if you ever go for a night swim, let me know,” Dean said with a sigh, feeling far too warm to have any human contact at that moment, but not letting that stop him from resting his chin on Nick’s shoulder. “Or if you ever  _ want _ to go on a night swim, let me know. I’ve still got the keys to the Impala, we could go down to the river or something.”

“I hate when you offer to run away from home with me,” Nick sighed a long trail of smoke.

“It’s only for one night.”

“Yeah, that’s the part I hate.”

“Don’t be such a downer, Luci. Happy thoughts. School starts soon. Senior year. And then you’re out of here and you never have to come back.”

“It’s still a year and a half until I’m eighteen.”

“ _ Only _ a year and a half,” Dean promised, pushing his cheek against Nick’s. 

Nick let out a long, chest-rattling sigh as he leaned into Dean, resting against him while he smoked. 

They stayed like that until sweat started pooling between them and Dean gave up on the physical contact in favor of sprawling on his back and enjoying whatever little breeze felt like coming through the open window. He closed his eyes and relaxed into the white noise of the TV and the crickets and frogs chirping outside. 

Nick broke their quiet by asking, “So this is what does it for straight guys?”

Dean opened an eye, looking over to see that the other boy had retrieved the hastily hidden magazines from between the mattresses. “Have you ever heard of this thing called privacy?

“You’re the one who leaves your curtains open,” Nick argued, turning the magazine sideways and opening the centerfold. “Eww.”

Dean snatched the magazine away. “You’re just jealous they don’t make Playboys for gay guys.”

“Pretty sure they do,” Nick snorted. “I mean, maybe not ones meant for guys to look at, but there’s got to be naked guy magazines out there for girls to look at.”

“Dude,” Dean grinned, “you’ve got a lot to learn about girls. They don’t look at this kind of stuff.”

Nick’s whole face lit up when he laughed.

“Well they don’t,” Dean insisted.

“They do. You don’t believe me we can go ask your mom,” Nick started to get up, his movements clumsy, making it very easy for Dean to catch him around the waist and pull him onto the bed. 

“You are  _ not _ asking my mom if girls masturbate.”

Nick laughed harder, wiping at his eyes. “You go ask her,” he insisted between giggles, “you’re the one who doesn’t believe me.”

“It doesn’t even make sense. Why would girls even need to?”

“Probably because they’ve got idiot boyfriends like you who don’t think about these things.”

Dean frowned, worrying that Nick might be right. He didn’t like the idea that his gay friend might know more about girls than he did; it felt wrong somehow. 

Silently admitting to himself that maybe he still had a bit to learn, Dean picked up his pillow and smacked Nick over the head with it. 

Nick slapped the pillow away, still giggling softly.

“Shut up,” Dean lay back, hugging the pillow to his chest, “you’ve never even kissed a girl, so how would you know anything about it?”

“Well, I’m not stupid, so there’s that,” Nick’s laughter had settled into a warm tint to his words. “People are people. It doesn’t matter if they’re guys or girls.”

“It’s totally different,” He argued.

“You’ve never even kissed a boy, so how would you know anything about it?” Nick threw Dean’s argument back at him with a grin. 

“I’m just saying, eyes closed, kissing anyone, I’d be able to tell instantly if it was a boy or girl.”

“You’re so full of it.”

“It’s different,” Dean kept on insisting.

“You think boys and girls are different flavors or something?”

“It would just feel different, ok.” Dean had no idea why they were still having this stupid conversation, because he was obviously right.

“It would just  _ feel  _ different,” Nick repeated. “Can you even hear yourself?”

“You just can’t admit when you're wrong,” he said smugly, his smile wiped away as Nick rolled over and kissed him. Dean’s mind was too hazy to react immediately and he was left laying there blinking wildly as Nick pulled back. 

“Did it  _ feel  _ different?” Nick asked dryly. 

“H-how could I get anything from that?” Dean swallowed hard, not sure why his heart was suddenly thundering against his ribs. “You didn’t even warn me and then you stopped and―”

Nick didn’t let Dean finish, kissing him again, leaving Dean once again breathless and feeling like he was in freefall. He lay there looking over at his friend who wore an openly expectant expression, like he was waiting for a verdict. 

“You keep suddenly stopping,” Dean complained, “how am I supposed to get anything?”

With a frustrated sound, Nick covered his own face with his hands and lay back on the bed. 

“No,” Dean sat up. “You don’t get to back out. This is for science or something now. Come here,” he grabbed his friend by his wrists, pulling him up and uncovering his face so that they could properly see each other. 

Nick’s eyes were wide and glassy and he watched Dean with an odd expression.

“Do it again,” Dean insisted, “Just one more time. I need a proper comparison.”

“I mean… if you  _ really _ need to know how wrong you are, then ok?” Nick’s hands were clammy as he slid them over Dean’s cheeks, kissing him one more time. 

‘One more time’ almost instantly got out of hand though. Dean was quickly and completely lost in the heat of his friend’s mouth, and how comfortably his hands fit against Nick’s sides. 

Dean didn’t even realize that they’d laid back down on the bed until there was a knock at his bedroom door and he heard his mom calling, “Honey, it’s after midnight. TV off and get some sleep.”

Wide-eyed and confused, Dean looked across at Nick.

When did they lay down? 

How long had they been there trading those deep, slow kisses?

And most importantly, had Nick always looked as hot as he did right then with his bruised lips and that confused little smile?

“Yeah,” Dean called in a shaky voice. “Goodnight, Mom.”

There was a pause outside his door before Mary asked, “Nick, honey, are you having breakfast with us tomorrow?”

“No, ma’am,” Nick said in an annoying clear tone. “I was just headed home.”

“Alright. Please use the backdoor when you go. You boys scare me climbing up on the roof.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nick said with a nod even though the woman couldn’t see them. 

“Good night, boys,” Mom said with a smile in her voice. 

“Good night,” they both called back. 

Nick, ever the responsible one, sat up and turned off the television. It left Dean laying there in the quiet, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. 

“Was it different?”

Dean blinked, looking over at his friend. “Huh?”

“Was it different?” Nick asked again. “You were right before. I’ve never kissed a girl, so I can’t really compare.”

“Well, yeah.” Dean pushed down the fluttering feeling in his chest, trying to calm the butterflies in his stomach. “Obviously it was different, which means I’m right and you’re wrong.”

“You’re such a liar,” Nick laughed. “It’s exactly the same.”

“Nah, Lu. That was… that was really fucking different. You’ll just have to believe me.” Dean pushed himself up, running his hands through his hair and trying to will himself sober. 

Nick rolled his eyes. “You’ve always got to be right, don’t you?”

“Can’t help it?” He tried to laugh it off, all those sudden messy feelings determined to find a home in his brain. “Hey, you wanna get a snack or something before you head home?”

“That all depends on if you’ve got Doritos or not,” Nick answered with that crooked grin of his.

Dean wanted to say of course they did, he wanted to joke and tease, and instead found himself at a loss for words, sitting there on the bed, grinning stupidly back at his friend. 

  
  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Like a deer in headlights, Dean stood there looking up at the man who used to be his friend. Hesitantly, he smiled back at Nick, more of a question than anything else, only to see the other man’s face go blank as he turned away, once more facing the camera. 

It was a very literal cold shoulder and it left Dean with a gutted feeling that he had a hard time shaking off. 

By the time that the photographer had finished taking a couple hundred pictures, Dean’s cheeks were aching from all the fake smiles that he’d been struggling to keep in place. He made straight down the church steps, holding a hand out to Lisa who looked up from her phone with a smile that quickly turned upside down.

“Can we go home now?” Dean asked as his friend’s fingers curled around his. 

“No. You promised you’d go to the reception.” She stood, glancing past his shoulder, her eyebrows hitching up. “Did something happen? I noticed you got stuck standing next to your bestest buddy for a while there.” 

“Nothing happened,” he said a little more harshly than intended.

“Then why is he looking at us like that?”

Dean turned quickly, but saw nothing. Nick was busy talking with some people, seemingly all his attention focused on what they were saying. He didn’t even glance in Dean’s direction. 

He turned back to his friend. “Like what?”

Lisa smiled up at him, a tight-lipped smile. “You know, I was talking with your family this morning before the wedding and everything. Your parents are so sweet.”

“Like  _ what, _ Lisa?”

“He’s really far away,” Lisa patted his chest. “I’m sure it was a very normal, casual glance that just happened to be in our direction.”

“Nick’s not normal or casual. Ever.”

“You look like you’ve earned yourself a drink,” Lisa looped her arm through his. “It’s way too hot out here for as dressed up as you are. Why don’t we head to the reception, get you out of that jacket, and try to relax a bit?”

Dean wanted to argue, to drag his feet and find reasons to stay where they were until he was able to catch Nick’s eye again. But, Lisa made a good point. He’d be a lot more comfortable after he got out of this jacket and loosened his tie. 

A drink wouldn’t hurt either.

Three drinks might have been enough to do some damage though, but Dean figured that was Sam’s fault for having an open bar at the reception. The dinner took forever, and it didn’t help that the courses were interspersed with toasts and speeches. Toasts from Sam and Jess’s friends, and from John and Mary, from Dean (he’d been practicing it on Lisa for weeks to make sure that he had it right), and unfortunately from Nick as well.

Dean tried to convince himself that, as Jess’s only family, the man had a right to toast his baby sister on her wedding day, but it was difficult for Dean to focus on the tender sentiment when Nick was standing directly across the table from him. 

Whoever had the bright idea to put the family of the bride and groom all at the same table was a monster and Dean hated them. 

It was very difficult to enjoy a meal when every time he looked up he had to look at Nick smiling and joking with Dean’s parents.

He knew for a fact that Nick hadn’t seen John or Mary in years, not since Nick ran away from home back when they were teenagers. Apparently there was a lot of catching up to do, which meant that Dean got to overhear all sorts of life updates that he didn’t care about.

“I know you’re just having the worst time,” Lisa leaned a shoulder into Dean’s side, speaking quietly into her drink, “but he’s cute and smart and if I wasn’t married…”

Dean rolled his eyes at her. 

“What? There’s no harm in looking,” she elbowed him gently as she whispered, “and come on, you got to admit, if he was a complete stranger he’d absolutely be your type.”

“I plead the fifth,” Dean grumbled, flatly refusing to admit to anything. 

“When did you kids all grow up?” Mary’s words made it through Dean’s irritation as he felt his mom’s gaze fall to him. She kept on with a wistful smile. “I feel like it was just yesterday that you all were staying up late watching movies on our couch and eating everything you could find.”

“We were growing boys,” Dean smiled, glancing off towards Sam, who had definitely outgrown them all. 

“I miss it,” she laughed, pushing at her husband who only smiled and shook his head. “Do you remember the trouble they’d get up to?”

“It’s hard to forget,” John seemed to give Dean a particularly weighted look, though his smile stayed in place. 

Mom looked at Lisa, pretending to whisper, “He acts tough, but John let these kids get away with just about anything. They were always breaking things and sneaking out of the house. I remember this one night they brought the car home with the fender dented―I’ve never seen John so angry, but next week he handed the keys right back to them.”

John sighed and took a long drink like the memory alone caused him pain. “That poor car.”

“Oh,” Mary hit his chest, “we did a lot worse to that car than Dean and Nick ever did.”

Dean nearly missed the ‘not in public’ look that Dad gave Mom. 

He was a little too caught up in remembering the night he and his friend had dented the car. Yeah, there had been a little accident with the Impala, but really that was one of the least important things that happened that night. 

Hoping no one would notice, Dean glanced over at the man sitting across from him, wishing to see some flash of recognition, but nothing at all showed on Nick’s face.

He could have been playing dumb, pretending not to remember, or maybe it just hadn’t been as important of a night for him as it had been for Dean. 

  
  
  
  


**\---- Somewhere Between August and September, 2004 ----**

Dean had been waiting for what felt like all day just for his neighbor to come home. Saint Francis started a whole week before Lawrence High School, which meant that after sleeping in until ten, Dean had been left with nothing at all to do for nearly eight hours while he waited for some signs of life in the room across from his. 

He kept the TV on low, trying to read a book while he waited, jumping when he heard a door bang open. He peered around the curtain to see Nick storming through his room in one very aggressive movement, throwing his book bag onto his bed and tugging at his tie. 

It wasn’t a good sign. 

The fact that it was nearly dark outside and the other boy should have been home hours ago was also not good. 

Dean could have blamed their weird relationship on his inability to just call out and see how Nick was doing, but to be honest, Dean had always been pretty good at saying stupid things long before he and Nick became friends. 

He leaned on the windowsill, letting out a long wolf whistle and grinning when the other boy looked up, his eyes widening. 

“Slow down, dude,” Dean teased. “How am I supposed to enjoy the show if you’re rushing through it like that?” 

Nick smiled at him in that exasperated way he did sometimes, like he was struggling right then to remember why it was that they were friends.

“Come on,” Dean leaned on his elbows, grinning, “show a little skin.”

Rolling his eyes, Nick dropped his tie around the bedpost and came as close as he could, pushing open his window and sitting on the sill. “What was that?”

Dean laughed, deciding it was best to not actually repeat himself right then. “School go ok?” He asked instead, fairly sure he already knew the answer.

A rattling sigh crept out of the other young man. 

“That bad?” 

“I got roped into playing piano for the choir tryouts, and I think Mom’s going to make me keep doing it. She says I need some good, wholesome afterschool activities to keep me out of trouble.”

“Does she realize how boring you are?” Dean teased, trying to get a smile out of his friend. “You couldn’t make trouble if you wanted to.”

“Oh,” Nick shook his head, “you don’t even know the kind of trouble I could make if I wanted.”

He loved a challenge as much as the next guy, but the way that Nick was looking at him made Dean’s insides go all warm and funny, and he suddenly couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Nick hopped off his window ledge, unbuttoning the white dress shirt that was part of his school uniform and trading it out for one of the many T-shirts that he’d stolen from Dean during the course of the summer. 

Those warm feelings started to settle somewhere low in Dean’s guts as he caught himself watching Nick undressing a little more closely than was probably ok between friends. He shook his head, and tried to think of anything at all to say that wasn’t a comment on Nick casually changing clothes.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Dean asked and instantly worried that it might have somehow been a dumb question. 

Nick came back to the window, leaning out and grinning at Dean. “Not yet. Are you asking me out?”

Dean struggled not to return the other boy’s grin, deciding it would be better the play dumb than acknowledge the teasing. “I was going to say you could come over and help me finish off the box of bagel bites, but yeah, we can go out and grab something if you want.”

“Burgers?” He asked with sudden hope. “Mom’s been on this weird vegetarian kick and I need some real food.”

“How dare she,” Dean shook his head, disturbed at the idea. “Come on, meet me out at the car, we’ll go get some meat in you.”

Nick laughed strangely before climbing out his bedroom window and heading towards the front of their houses. 

Which made it a bit of a race, and Dean hated losing. He went as fast as he could while still keeping quiet. Dad had been pretty lenient about the car lately, but he was working a night shift, which meant Dean would have to ask Mom if he could go out―and he already knew what that answer would be. So he tiptoed downstairs and out to the garage, grinning as he opened the garage door to see Nick already standing there waiting. 

“Took you long enough,” Nick lightly complained, bumping shoulders with Dean before going to the Impala and sliding into the passenger seat. 

There were plenty of burger joints in Lawrence, but Dean decided to drive them down towards Clinton, towards the lake, to put some distance between them and Nick’s irritable mood. Not that Dean was going to complain, he knew that by next week when his own classes started back up, he’d be just as grumpy. 

Dean didn’t mention the fact that they were taking the long way around to dinner, instead asking for a rundown of Nick’s day, with extra questions about the piano playing part.

“You seriously never mentioned to me that you played any instruments.”

“It’s just piano,” Nick sank lower in his seat, one arm out the window as he curled his fingers through the wind rushing past them. “I only know some church songs.”

“Can you play any cool songs?”

“Only if you think church songs are cool,” Nick chuckled.

It was stupid how much Dean enjoyed asking idiot questions just to get a laugh out of his friend, but since Mrs. Williams had come home and Nick had begrudgingly gone back to his own place, it had been harder and harder to get a smile out of him. 

They pulled into a truckstop, Dean feeling like maybe all the neon signs for fast food might be the last that they’d see before getting where they were going. 

The unfamiliar surroundings pulled Nick out of his mood, and he suddenly sat up, pulling against his seatbelt to look out the windows. “Where are we?”

“Obviously Burger King,” Dean did his best to sound sarcastic as he angled the Impala into the drive-through. 

Nick scratched his head, turning in his seat to look at all the big rigs and gas stations around them. “No. Seriously, where the hell are we?”

“About fifteen minutes North of Clinton Lake.”

“Dean Winchester, are you kidnapping me?”

“Only a little,” Dean confessed, unrolling his window and glancing back at his friend to ask what he wanted to eat. Their timing was off though. Nick had been leaning over to kiss Dean’s cheek, which would have been a sweet but weird way to say thank you, and missed his mark. A startlingly abrupt kiss grazed the corner of Dean’s mouth and left him wide-eyed. Startled but grinning. 

“Can I take your order?” The static voice came through the little box outside his window, forcing Dean to break the lingering eye contact between him and his friend. 

He placed his order, though it took longer than he’d like to remember what he’d wanted to eat.

Before he could try again to ask what Nick wanted, the other boy leaned over Dean, his shoulder pressing into Dean’s chest as he placed his own order. It was close and warm and very distracting. 

The person on the other side of the speaker gave them their total and instructed them to pull around to the second window.

“Thank you,” Nick called out before finally leaning back into his own seat. 

“Ok,” Dean took his foot off the break, letting the car creep forward, “what was that?”

“What?” Nick asked with a very unbelievably innocent smile.

“I know you’re super gay, and I’m super hot, but try and play it cool, Lu. Normal guys don’t kiss other guy’s cheeks.”

“I don’t think you’re actually qualified to give anyone ‘normal guy’ lessons,” Nick said with a smile.

“Watch it, or I won’t share my french fries with you.”

“Oh no,” Nick dragged the words out, grinning. 

Dean mentally gave himself another point for tonight, maybe even two points, because grins like that should be worth extra. 

“Sorry I didn’t steal you last night for a proper end of summer bash,” Dean shrugged, “but since it’s only your first day of school, I think it still counts.” 

“It counts,” Nick agreed, that grin still in place.

Squirming only a little at all that happy coming his way, Dean paid for their food, setting the bag down between them and getting back on the road. From the corner of his eye he saw his friend digging into their food, eating half his burger before setting the paper wrappings down in his lap. 

“Fry?” Nick asked, offering one perfectly golden fried sliver of potato to Dean by lightly poking him in the cheek with it. 

Smiling, Dean ate the fry, and a few more as Nick kept holding them up for him. 

“So, where are we going?”

“Already told you,” Dean leaned a little to the right, opening his mouth for yet another fry.

“You didn’t.”

“To Clinton Lake,” he explained with a sigh, leaning over a little more and clicking his teeth. “More fries, man. Come on.”

Laughing softly, Nick kept feeding him fries, enjoying the rest of the drive in quiet. 

Dean had been out here fishing with Dad and Sammy about a hundred times, and even in the dark he knew how to take the winding road down to the lakefront, parking the Impala near the docks. He killed the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt, sinking low and enjoying the sound of the frogs and crickets. 

Wordlessly, Nick passed him his burger, before pushing his knees up against the dashboard and settling in. 

It was a comfortable quiet, like most of their nights had been this summer.

“You know,” Dean whispered like they were in a library, “this could only be better if you remembered to bring something to smoke.”

Beside him, Nick shook his head, whispering back just as softly, “I’m out.”

Dean shrugged, easily letting go of the idea. “Wanna go down to the water?”

“We could,” Nick drawled, tugging at his lower lip thoughtfully. “I’ve never seen it empty before… it’s kinda tempting.”

Dean didn’t even have a chance to challenge the other boy to a race, Nick was just suddenly throwing open the passenger door and bolting towards the dock. 

Feeling like he’d somehow been cheated, Dean hopped out and ran after his friend. 

For a few seconds he was going at full speed, but Dean felt his steps slowing as he saw that Nick was shedding his clothes as he went. 

Dean had a choice to make and very little time to make it in. 

It wasn’t a difficult decision, to be honest. But then again, Dean had always been pretty impulsive. 

He couldn’t run and shed his clothes at the same time, so it was really more of an awkward jog and by the time he made it to the end of the dock his friend was already in the water. 

Seeing as it was too late to win, Dean decided on the next best option, yelling, “Cannonball!” loud enough to scare all the nearby frogs into silence, he jumped into the cold water. Coming right back up to the surface and taking a pained breath before forcing out, “Holy shit, it’s cold!”

Nick chuckled, treading water and slowly drifting further away. “You think we can make it out to the buoy?”

“Dude, I might race you on foot, but I’m not dumb enough to try in water. You’re like a fucking fish.”

With only his face above the water, Nick’s grin became the majority of who he was. His laugh did unexpected things to Dean’s body. Things that Dean was glad were well hidden in the dark. 

It had hardly been a whole week since the two of them tried kissing for science, and admittedly, Dean had been a little turned on afterwards, but that was because of the kissing. Kissing was awesome. There were times that even  _ watching  _ other people kissing did it for him. Hell, shampoo commercials with girls tossing their wet hair back and smiling usually did it for him. He was a teenage boy. That’s just how his body worked.

None of the usual culprits were here at the lake with them though. 

Just his friend, grinning at him like a wolf, and Dean very grateful suddenly that he didn’t have to stand right then because his knees felt like jelly. 

“I’ll give you a head start,” Nick offered, swimming in a slow, lazy circle around Dean. 

“That’s only gonna make it that much worse when you beat me.” Dean dunked his head under water, hoping the cold shock would help get his brain in working order. He blinked water from his eyes to see that his friend had mercifully given up on him. 

Nick was swimming off in the general direction of the buoy, leaving Dean to silently give his body a stern talking to about how right now was not a good time. No time around his friend was going to be a good time. 

The water was too damn cold to stay still for long, and as soon as Dean felt like he had things under control again, he took off after his friend. 

It was obvious before he even started paddling that Nick was going to get out to the buoy first, and by the time that Dean caught up the other boy had pulled himself up onto the slowly rocking float. 

“How did you even get up there?” Dean demanded, shaking water from his hair. 

From where he sat, Nick was mostly just long pale legs. A lot of leg. He peered over his knees and down at Dean, smiling faintly. “It looked climbable. So I climbed.”

Rolling his eyes, Dean wrapped his hands around one of the support bars and tested to see if he could rock the buoy. It was hard to get any leverage while still in the water, but the smallest bit of swaying was promising, and Dean kept it up until Nick finally took notice of the change in the previous gentle bobbing. 

“Having fun down there?” He asked.

“Sure am,” Dean grinned up at his friend. 

“You trying to knock me down?”

Dean hummed in agreement.

If he’d had a little bit more time to really get the momentum going, he might have been able to dislodge the other boy, but Nick went ahead and ruined the whole thing by jumping down on his own. 

Dean turned, looking out at the lake and the bubbles drifting to the surface where Nick had gone under. For some reason suddenly finding himself alone made Dean very nervous. He knew his friend would surface, he just wasn’t sure where and he had a feeling that Nick was going to try and scare him. 

A feeling that was well-founded as unseen hands wrapped around his ankles. 

Dean let himself get dunked below the surface just for the opportunity to tackle his friend. There was a lot of kicking and splashing. He was pretty sure he swallowed a lot more lake water than was healthy, but he was grinning at Nick when they both finally surfaced, clinging to the edge of the buoy and laughing. 

It was a little surreal being at the lake when it was dark, more so that they were completely alone. There was no one out there to tell them to keep their voices down, or to stop horsing around. And most importantly, no one around to care that the two boys eventually climbed up onto the dock near the car, to sit in the moonlight and drip dry before getting dressed again. 

Nick didn’t seem to think twice about laying out, face down, on the wooden slats. He didn’t even glance over as Dean dragged himself up out of the water, which meant that he didn’t notice the way that Dean glanced over at him. 

Over the years, Dean had checked out his fair share of girls.

But that was his first time really checking out a guy. 

Objectively, and for a dude, Nick had a very nice ass. 

Dean made himself look away, deciding that now, and really never, was going to be an ok time to have those kinds of thoughts. 

He wasn’t into guys, which meant regardless of how cute that butt was, it was just Dean’s wires getting a little crossed and he wasn’t actually into Nick. Also, Dean’s straightness meant that Nick couldn’t possibly be into him, so any sorts of wayward thoughts on Dean’s part were just a waste of energy.

Deciding it would be the safest way to not make his friend feel very uncomfortable, Dean lay face down as well, folding his arms to make a pillow for himself. The night air was warm and they’d be dry soon enough, which could only mean getting dressed and heading back up to Lawrence. 

Almost like Nick could tell that their little mini-vacation was coming to a close, he turned his head to look over at Dean. With a hint of a smile he said, “Thanks for stealing me, even just for a little bit.”

“Come on, Luci, that’s what friends are for.”

“You ever going to stop calling me that?”

“I will when it stops making your eyebrows do that cute grumpy thing they’re doing right now,” Dean reached over, pressing one fingertip to the angry line between his friend’s eyebrows. “It’s adorable.”

“I’m not adorable.”

“You really are though. Look at that sweet little pout,” Dean trailed his finger down Nick’s nose to his lower lip, lightly tapping as he cooed, “just the cutest, most adorable, little muffin. Look at you.”

Nick bit his finger.

Which was probably a very reasonable reaction to being poked at like that.

That image though, of Nick’s teeth against Dean’s skin, brought those funny and traitorous feelings roaring right back. He felt heat building in his chest and starting to creep up his neck. 

He pulled his hand back slowly, not very far, just enough to tap his friend’s lip again. “See,” Dean tried to keep his voice nice and even, “like I said,  _ adorable _ . You’re like a puppy.”

“Sometimes you make me miss when we were kids and I could just knock that stupid smile off your face.”

“You are still welcome to try,  _ Luci _ .”

“Don’t tempt me,” Nick bit each word off. “Right now I don’t know what I’d do if I got my hands on you.”

“Oh, sounds fun,” Dean winked, happier than he should have been to see how such a small movement seemed to utterly wreck Nick’s confidence. 

The other boy’s shoulders hunched up and he turned his face away, laughing softly. 

It gave Dean a very nice view of his friend’s neck and the long line of his back. 

If that was a girl laying out there on the dock with him, Dean would have taken the opportunity to kiss some of that smooth skin.

Which was a very strange idea to suddenly pop into his head, and it came with that unexpected memory of the two of them in Dean’s bed kissing, and the way that Nick had simply laid there afterwards, grinning that amused little grin of his. 

Right then on the docks Dean would have given just about anything for his friend to turn back to him with one of those grins―and he would have taken that opportunity to steal a kiss because a few nights back had been nothing at all like kissing a girl, and Dean suddenly needed to know if it was because Nick was a boy, or because Nick was just  _ Nick _ .

Dean didn’t know which would have been a happier answer. 

He sat up, turning to put his back towards the other boy, looking out at the water and thinking calming, unsexy thoughts that stayed far away from the idea of kissing his friend. Once he was sure he could get safely back to his clothes, Dean got up, shuffling down the dock and collecting his pants, shirt, and shoes. 

Nick met him back at the car a few minutes later, dressed in his shoes and pants, holding his stolen t-shirt around his shoulders. “Do we really have to go back?”

“You’ve got school in the morning, and you need your beauty sleep.” Dean slid into the car, waiting for the other boy to get in before adding, “You know you’ve got to look cute for your boyfriend.”

He had no idea why he’d felt a need to tack that little bit on the end. 

It earned him a very odd look. 

“What  _ boyfriend _ ?” Nick asked with a strange laugh, twisting his shirt between his hands. 

“That little hottie you brought home at the beginning of summer and made out with on your bed. I never got his name.”

“ _ Arron _ ?” Nick laughed. “No. He’s… he’s not my boyfriend. He’s just this guy from school I was helping study.”

“Sure, and what were you boys studying exactly?”

Nick snorted, reaching over and hitting Dean’s shoulder. “Math. Just math. He had a little boy-curious crush on me, but it wasn’t anything that went anywhere.”

“Boy-curious,” Dean tried the word out, shaking his head and wondering if that’s what was wrong with him. “Was he just not your type?”

“I mean, I like kissing guys, I’m not all that picky.” Nick looked out the back window, watching as the lake vanished from view as the car kept down the dark roads. “I already told you though, I don’t really date.”

That was something that Dean hadn’t thought about in months. “Oh, because you’ve still got that secret crush going on. Don’t you?”

Nick didn’t answer.

“That’s… that sucks,” Dean finally said. 

“It really does.”

“Do you miss him?” He glanced over, trying to figure out what that expression on Nick’s face meant. “I mean, you haven't seen him since you left that military school of yours, right? So you’ve gotta miss him.”

“Dean,” Nick took a long breath, shaking his head, “we didn’t go to the academy together. It’s … it’s just a dumb crush I’ve had since I was ten… and I still see him around all the time, so to answer you, no. I don’t miss him. I don’t really get a chance to.”

“He’s in Lawrence?” Dean perked up. “Do I know him?”

It was dark in the car and easy to miss the way that Nick slowly shook his head again, wearing such a frustrated expression.

Sighing, Dean gave in, “Alright, alright. I guess it’s none of my business who your secret crush is on―but as your friend, I swear I would tell you if I had it bad for some random guy in town, and your lack of trust in me really hurts.”

Nick grunted. 

Considering that Dean hadn’t brought up any of the confusing thoughts he’d been having all night, he might have just told a pretty big lie. He pushed those slightly guilty feelings down, and asked, “Give me a hint at least?”

“I have accidentally given you so many hints since you came home from your Uncle’s, I’m honestly confused why you even still hang out with me.”

“Come on. Why would I care who it is?” Dean laughed, glancing over and seeing no returning smile, which forced him to keep going. “I mean obviously I  _ care _ because you’re my friend and I don’t want you falling for just any idiot out there. Lawrence isn’t exactly crawling with amazing guys for you to get hung up on. But like, I don’t care who it is along the lines of us staying friends. Why would I?” A sudden thought occurred to him and he blurted it out without thinking, “Unless it’s Sammy or something, because that would be really freaking weird.”

“It’s not your brother.”

“Or my dad, right? Because that would be…” Dean trailed off, shivering at the thought.

“It’s  _ not _ your dad,” Nick promised, the weight of his gaze a very real thing.

Dean squirmed.

“Your dad is kinda hot though,” Nick offered almost casually, but exactly like he could see how Dean felt about hearing that kind of talk. “He’s the kind of man I don’t mind calling him  _ Sir _ , if you know what I mean.”

“Gross, man.” And Dean meant that from the depths of his soul, but he also loved to hear his friend laughing. 

There was a lot of light teasing the rest of the way home, mostly Nick making awful comments, the worst one being about having watched John and Dean working on the car over the summer, and how that sweaty display of masculinity had sent Nick off to a cold shower. 

Dean really did hate it. 

But he also kind of liked the idea of Nick in a cold shower so he didn’t really complain as much as he probably should have. It was a thought that he might have been entertaining a little too hard, seeing as he took a turn a little too sharp, rolling the Impala up onto the sidewalk and into the stop sign that he hadn’t even seen. 

Beside him Nick was swearing, bracing his hands against the dashboard.

Dean was frozen in place, eyes wide.

They were only a few blocks from home by then, and for whatever reason, Dean had the irrational thought that John would have somehow heard the sound of the minor accident. 

Shaking, he got the Impala into reverse, then into park once he felt the car tires roll down off the curb. Dean stumbled from the car, around the front, squinting into the headlights. There was a stop sign pole shaped indent in the front fender. 

Dean didn’t even think he’d been going that fast. 

“He’s going to kill me,” he whispered as he clearly saw see his own demise in that shallow dent. 

The passenger door opened and Nick stood, peering out, “How bad is it?”

Dean could only shake his head. 

His friend came over, assessing the damage and unhelpfully saying, “I think the pole looks worse than the car.”

“I don’t think Dad’s going to care about the goddamned pole.”

Nick reached out and touched the dent as gently as if he was worried he’d somehow hurt the car. 

“Best case scenario, I’m grounded for the rest of my life,” Dean shook his head, slowly resigning himself to his fate. 

“Tell him I was driving,” Nick said suddenly. It wasn’t an offer. It was stated like a fact.

“You don’t have your license.”

“He won’t yell at me.”

“He will kill you. This car is his baby.”

“Dean, if he didn’t even yell at me when he caught me kissing a guy, and he didn’t yell at me all the times he caught you and me smoking in your room, he’s not going to yell at me over the car, and he certainly won’t kill me.”

“He might, though. You don’t know my dad. He’s weirdly nice around you but―hold up, what do you mean he caught you kissing a guy?”

“Focus, Dean.”

“He knows you’re gay? Are you sure?”

Nick made an irritated sound, pacing the slightest bit. “When I say  _ kissing _ , I mean there might have been some hands down some pants. So yeah, pretty sure he knows.”

“When the hell did that happen?”

“It was at your brother’s track meet in the spring.” Nick waved it off, pointing out, “but that’s not super important right now.”

It almost made sense when Dean thought about it, that John would be weirdly ok with the boy next door being gay. After all, one of Dad’s best friends was Uncle Bobby, which meant that some of Dad’s best friends were also Rufus and his husband. A ll four guys regularly had hunting trips up north during deer season, which meant that dad was around gay guys often enough not to be weirded out by it.

It was a thought that he struggled with though, getting a little lost and looking up to see that Nick had already gotten back in the car, but this time on the driver’s side. 

“What the hell?”

“Told you, I was driving,” Nick locked his door, looking out at Dean defiantly. “What if John’s up when we get there? It’s got to look convincing.”

“Do you even know how to drive?”

“Course I do. I’ve had my permit for a year and I used to drive Jeeps all the time back at the academy.”

Oddly those two single bullet points on his friend’s credentials didn’t exactly ease Dean’s mind. But he got into the passenger side of the car, his hands still shaking as he buckled up.

Nick drove them home, he also very nearly got the car parked safely in the garage before the door into the house opened up and John’s broad frame stood there outlined against the bright kitchen light behind him.

Dread was a lead weight in Dean’s stomach and if it weren’t for Nick he might not have been brave enough to get out of the car. 

But, fearless as ever, Nick finished parking, got out and strode up to John like he brought home a dented car every night. 

Yes, they got in trouble. 

Both of them got in trouble, except the brunt of Dean’s was for letting Nick drive without even having his permit in the car with them. Oddly enough, the lecture that fell on Nick was mostly over the fact that he had school in the morning and it was already after midnight. 

The fender seemed the least of John’s concerns and it honestly felt like Nick had worked some kind of magic spell over the old man. 

A few guilty minutes later, finally back up in his own bedroom, Dean was rushing to his window to slide out on the ledge and wait for Nick to do the same on the other side of the fence. From his high vantage point, Dean was able to watch his friend scrambling up onto the roof of the other house and into his own bedroom. 

Dean breathed a sigh of relief once the other boy finally looked back over his shoulder and flashed a small grin. 

“You ok?” Dean mouthed in an exaggerated way, hoping that it would be readable from Nick’s room. 

Two thumbs up were given, that cocky bit of confidence easy to see in the way that Nick sat straddling his windowsill. 

“You’re fucking crazy,” Dean whisper-yelled out into the night.

Nick laughed softly, only a shake of his shoulders, and Dean felt those butterflies from earlier start beating against his insides. 

It might have been teasing earlier when they’d been on the dock, but Dean had been serious. His friend was adorable; all long legs and confidence and smiles to gloss over absolutely everything else. 

Dean felt like an idiot that night, sitting in his window and smiling as he watched his friend crawl into bed, all the while that awful fluttering feeling tumbling around in his chest. 

Back then he didn’t know what to call it other than a crush. 

A stupid crush on his stupid friend, and back then he thought he could be ok with that.

  
  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Years later, sitting there across from the man that his childhood friend had become, Dean didn’t feel any of those old feelings. There was only an old, dull ache.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the blip in updates. you'd think having this story pretty much done would make it super easy to stick to an update schedule, but depression is a beast.  
> Hope y'all are hanging in there <3<3 nothing but love for you guys from this lump over here on the Pacific coast.

\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Dean came back out of his little trip down memory lane in time to hear Lisa and Jess talking about honeymoon plans, both women leaning forward over their plates as they laughed. 

“I think a treehouse honeymoon sounds so romantic,” Lisa was agreeing with a grin. “Boys just don’t understand these things.”

“Right?” Jess clenched her delicate hands into little fists in laughing frustration. “It’s like romantic camping, but no, Sam wanted to go to Disneyland.”

It was great seeing his friend enjoying herself. Dean had worried that this whole event might be torture on Lisa who had never actually volunteered herself to come along and babysit a grown man for a week. It was even better to see Sammy’s indignant attempts at defending himself. 

“I’m not the bad guy here. I love camping as much as Jess loved the idea of going to Disneyland, but she’s not talking about one of those amazing treehouse hotels out in the forest that you see pictures of. My lovely wife,” Sam paused to peek at Jessica and sigh like the big lovesick kid he was, “she’s talking about the treehouse that used to be in my parent’s backyard.”

Jess batted at Sam’s shoulder, “I loved that treehouse, ok? Sitting up there with you is one of my favorite memories from when we were kids.”

“Hold up,” Dean butted in, needing to get out of his own head. “What’s all this past-tense  _ loved’ _ ?” He turned to his parents with a feeling of betrayal. “You guys didn’t tear it down, did you?”

“I never wanted your father to build it in the first place,” Mary shook her head at him, taking a sip of her wine before pointing out, “You boys were always falling out of it and getting splinters. It was dangerous. I don’t want my sweet little grandbabies getting hurt too. They might not have as thick of skulls as you boys do, and someone could seriously get hurt.”

Dean didn’t point out the obvious fact that there were no grandkids planned for any time soon. Mom had just always had a vendetta against that treehouse. 

“ _ Mom _ ,” he sighed in the least whining way that he could manage, “that place was the best! We had campouts up there, and it was my favorite reading spot. I think I did all my homework senior year in that treehouse. How could you guys just tear it down?”

“Dean, honey, I’m not blind. I know exactly what went on up in that tree,” Mary’s easy smile stayed in place, but her eyes flashed like a challenge, almost like she was daring him to argue, for him to tell the truth about everything that he’d done up there, “and I am too old and too tired to have any more kids sneaking up into my trees at night to smoke with their friends… or to fool around,” she turned that knowing smile towards Jess and Sam. 

The newlyweds managed to blush in unison, both averting their eyes and pretending that they had no idea what Mom was talking about. 

But Dean nearly missed that little moment of synchronistic cuteness as he felt his insides twist like Mom’s accusation had been meant for him.

For him and Nick. 

He looked across at the other man without even thinking, only to find that Nick was looking right back at him, his pale eyes wide. It was a shared look of fear that the two men exchanged, but only for a second before Nick seemed to remember himself, squaring his shoulders and looking away to fiddle with his fork. 

Dean might have managed to be a little more offended at the obvious brush off he’d just received if it wasn’t for the very uncomfortable reminder of the sorts of things that he and Nick used to get up to when they were alone.

  
  
  


\----  **September, 2004** \---

Dean’s parents had made him put most of his summer job money into his bank account, which was lame. A good chunk of that money however was used to pay for a shiny new Playstation Two for the TV in his room. Not that he’d needed any excuse that summer to get Nick to come over, but the promise of new videogames worked like a charm. 

Only problem was that it lured Sammy in too. 

And it was very difficult for Dean to try and flirt his way through this weird crush he had on his friend, while he had an audience. 

Jess being there made it even worse. 

“Let us have a turn,” Sam was a broken record, bouncing on Dean’s bed, digging his weird long monkey toes into Dean’s back. “You guys have been playing for an hour.”

“It’s my game,” he grumbled, “and Mom said she didn’t want you playing fighting games.”

“I won’t tell her,” Sam argued, continuing his annoying kicking. 

“I won’t tell either,” Jess added and started pushing at Dean too. 

The words ‘YOU WIN’ popped up on Nick’s side of the screen again for the fifth time in a row, and the other boy took his winning streak with quiet grace. He simply turned to Dean and whispered, “oh no.”

“Look, that wasn’t a fair match,” Dean argued. “I’ve got interference,” he reached over his shoulder to slap at the little kid's feet.

“That just sounds like loser talk to me,” Nick hummed softly, leaning against Dean and smiling up at him. 

Dean’s heart skipped.

“Maybe you should just get better?” Nick suggested super helpfully. 

“Maybe you should kiss my ass?” Was Dean’s super witty reply, and honestly the cleaner of two comebacks that came to his mind. As it was, his choice of the word  _ ass _ had both the kids sitting behind him erupting into giggles. Dean ignored them though, because Nick was sitting up and mouthing something best not said in front of the little kids. 

The two older boys were sitting on the floor, maybe a little closer than Nick had planned, their knees touching, and it was as close to flirting that Dean had been able to manage since the night the two of them snuck off to the lake. 

Knee touching was not what Dean had in mind for that Friday night though. His parents had gone out on a double date with the Williams (which had to suck and he had no idea why or how that had happened in the first place), which meant that Dean and Nick were stuck babysitting. 

For some reason, Dean had thought it would all play out smoothly. He’d set the kids up with a movie and some popcorn downstairs. Then he and his friend could go up to his room, play some video games, sit very close, maybe joke around a bit, maybe their eyes would meet and there would be that little moment where a light would go on in Nick’s eyes and he’d suddenly realize that Dean couldn’t stop thinking about him, and maybe they’d kiss.

It didn’t have to go exactly like that. 

Dean would have been happy with only bits and pieces of the night that he’d been daydreaming about, as long as it ended the same way. 

Instead, he got a pair of twelve-year-olds sitting behind him, bouncing on his bed, refusing to go away and give him at least five minutes alone with Nick to try and work a little of that Winchester charm. 

Feeling frustrated that he had to move to plan B, and twice as frustrated that he had to suddenly come up with a plan B, Dean passed his controller back, feeling it snatched out of his hands almost instantly. 

“You know,” he looked over at his friend, “why don’t we let’em have a turn. Maybe we can go out to the back and… get a little fresh air.” 

It wasn’t the most subtle offer.

Dean had never been great at subtle though. 

Nick raised an eyebrow, bringing a hand to his lips like he was holding a joint, only for a second, like a question. 

Dean nodded, getting up while Nick passed his controller off to Jess. 

It was a little trickier to casually get things out of his closet with the kids in his room, but thankfully they were distracted enough picking their characters in the game and didn’t take any notice of Dean shoving the little ziplock bag and lighter into his jean’s pocket. 

“We’re just going to be out back for a bit,” he told his brother who obviously didn’t care. “Holler if you need anything.”

Sam didn’t even nod in his direction, far too busy pointing out the buttons on Jess’ controller and trying to explain what they each did. 

Dean rolled his eyes and headed downstairs and out the back door, hearing Nick trailing after him. “Just so you know,” he called over his shoulder, “I was letting you win.”

Nick scoffed. “That’s a load of BS.”

“I’m just a nice guy like that,” Dean assured, offering a grin before heading up the ladder and into the treehouse. 

“What’s wrong with the porch?” Nick called from where he stood on the lawn.

“There’s a light on the porch,” Dean peered down, “I didn’t want the moths getting to you.”

Nick mumbled a heartfelt, “shut up,” as he started to climb, softly complaining about big eyes, and furry little wings, and creepy feet.

It was stupid, but as the other boy pulled himself up to sit beside him, Dean felt a sudden rush of nerves. He pushed it all down and sprawled out on the wooden floor like he always did, attempting to be as casual as possible.

Either he did a decent job of it or, more likely, Nick simply didn’t notice as he settled in, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes. 

“I wish me and Jess could just live here,” the boy from next door breathed out. 

“In the treehouse?” Dean teased, clinging to whatever words he could find that felt ‘normal’ right then. “Not sure if that would be the most comfortable new house for the two of you.”

“You know what I mean,” Nick said with a faint smile, not even opening his eyes as he reached out and smacked Dean’s leg. “It just… I don’t know, man. I just feel more relaxed here.”

There was a pretty obvious reason for that, but Dean knew better than to bring it up. “You know Mom and Dad like you guys. Jess is adorable and you… I mean, you know you’re pretty damn cute too.”

A grin split over Nick’s face as he said, “Shut up, Dean,” reaching over and hitting his leg again. 

His hand stayed where it was, fingers cool and light through the denim of Dean’s jeans, and that irrational and hormonal part of Dean’s brain went haywire for a second because touching was nice and that idea didn’t leave a whole lot of room for other thoughts.

Nick moved, which felt really unfortunate for a split second, until it became apparent that his hand’s destination was Dean’s hip. 

All sorts of wild impulses went shouting and rioting through Dean’s mind, only to fall quiet as the other boy dug into his pocket to retrieve the junk that Dean had jammed in there earlier.

It made sense.

A lot more sense than those exciting possibilities that had bloomed and died in Dean’s imagination in that little moment. 

Dean was pretty sure that Nick had never even once checked him out. He’d never noticed a single heavy look and side-eye from the other boy. Not that that was a deterrent. Because Nick liked guys, and Dean was a guy, so even if he wasn’t attracted to Dean in the slightest that didn’t mean that they couldn’t try kissing again. 

“Hey,” Dean looked over, his breath catching in his throat when he saw that Nick was carefully licking the rolling paper for the single joint that he’d rolled. It was a bad idea for Dean to try and say anything resembling normal while watching someone else carefully sliding the tip of their tongue along something. He hadn’t realized that though, so when Dean opened his mouth he dimly heard himself ask, “you wanna make out?”

Nick froze in place, still as a statue other than the flash of his eyes as they darted to Dean.

“I-I was just,” Dean felt a wave of clumsy stupidity come rushing out of him, “you know, thinking it’s kind of boring up here, and you know, kissing… it’s a good way to waste some time. Kissing’s fun, and practice is always good. But like, whatever, man. Don’t get all weird about it. It was just a joke… mostly. Unless you want to...”

Dean considered seeing himself out of the treehouse and then possibly running away from home and never coming back. 

“Practice?” Nick sounded out the word slowly.

“Well, yeah,” Dean laughed but it sounded weird. “You seen me bring any girls home this summer? Like maybe one. One whole girl. School starts next week. What if I’m out of practice?  _ ME _ ? I’ve got a reputation to keep, man.”

Nick remained just as still as ever, watching Dean like he’d never seen him before.

“Or, you know,” Dean took a deep breath and tried to laugh it all off again, not very sure that his second attempt went any better, “you could fucking finish rolling that joint because it’s taking you a million years.”

Cautiously, looking like he was worried what would happen if he moved too fast, Nick handed over the little bit of rolled paper. 

“ _ Thank you, _ ” Dean dragged the words out, hoping that it sounded the right amount of sarcastic.

The first night after Dean had come home to Kansas, when he’d crept up to the treehouse hoping to catch his little brother up to some trouble, he and Nick had shared an uneasy smoke. Neither of them seemed to really trust the other young man that he’d suddenly found himself sitting beside. 

They’d come a long way since then, but for a few minutes, Dean felt like he’d gone right back to square one. 

Back to being awkward strangers who would both rather be somewhere else.

Dean took a couple of long drags in that uncomfortable silence, knowing that he’d almost definitely been better off just quietly thinking about his friend’s ass on his own time because it would be hard to come back from this. 

He held out the joint to Nick, his knee bouncing as he let his thoughts begin to eat at him. 

Nick didn’t take the offering.

Bracing himself, Dean turned to his friend (hopefully not an ex-friend) and pointedly said, “Come on, Lu. I was obviously joking.”

Nick licked his lips, clearing his throat and finally moving as the spell over him broke. He took the joint and a very long drag before clearing his throat again and saying, “You shouldn’t.”

“Christ, man. I didn’t realize you’d be so sensitive about it. You usually tease me right back.”

“I didn’t mean the joking,” Nick said, looking out the little window and the low, suburbian skyline. “I mean the going back to school without getting in a little practice.”

Dean blinked.

“You probably sucked to begin with. I mean, let’s be honest, you weren’t exactly making me weak in the knees with your little ‘science experiment’ a couple of weeks ago.” Nick shook his head. “A little practice would probably be a good idea.”

“Pssh,” Dean snorted, shrugging and realizing he’d somehow lost every ounce of cool that he’d ever had. “You weren't anything special yourself, Luci.”

“Oh, bull shit, Winchester,” Nick grinned, his usual cocky self suddenly coming back in a rush. “You know where I get the weed I bring to these little potlucks? I know a guy, and because I don’t ever have cash on me I pay with kisses. Yeah. I’m that good. Never had a single complaint.”

There were so many odd things that Nick had told him over the summer that that kind of statement hardly pinged Dean’s radar. He’d pack it away for later. For right now, he was sliding over the wooden slats, wrinkling his nose and offering a disinterested, “Eh? You’re  _ ok _ , but I wouldn’t pay you for ‘em.”

“You’re in luck because, for you? I’m willing to offer a kiss for the low, low price of free. But just because I’m bored too.” He gound out their joint on the floor between them, softly saying, “So get over here and kiss me before I change my mind.”

In all the time he’d been flirting with girls, Dean couldn’t remember a single one who’d ever bossed him around quite like that. It wasn’t a bad thing. After all, Nick was really cute when he was being bossy. 

"Don't think I won't," Dean warned as he licked his lips and leaned in.

Nick looked like he was about to say something but fell quiet, his eyes going wide again like he hadn’t actually expected the two of them to end up here like this. 

Determined to go through with this, even if all he got was one single kiss, Dean pressed forward. An excited murmur of panic fluttering to life inside of him just before their lips touched, Dean’s heart beating so loud he was sure that the other boy had to be able to hear it too. 

The first kiss was light and hesitant, Dean holding his breath until he felt Nick leaning into him, his hand coming up to draw cold fingers against the back of Dean’s neck. And that was more than enough of an invitation. 

Dean closed his eyes and deepened the kiss, his stomach instantly full of unfamiliar butterflies and his knees feeling like jelly as Nick followed along without hesitation.

He had no idea if it was the weed or if that dizzying high was caused by the taste and touch of the other boy, but Dean was utterly lost. He sank into Nick, not even thinking as he slid a hand under his friend’s shirt to stroke over the sharp jut of his hip.

With a sharp breath, Nick pulled back, rosy-cheeked and kiss-bitten, staring wide-eyed at Dean. 

His breath was rough, all that excitement replaced with sudden panic. 

What if Nick didn't want this? What if Dean had really fucked it up? What if―?

But before he had an opportunity to properly freak out that he might have ended a perfectly good friendship with one single slip up, Nick was pulling him back in with a determined growl. 

Dean didn’t do much thinking after that.

He didn’t need to.

All he needed to do right then was follow Nick’s lead. 

  
  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Dean had never been much for dancing. He always blamed genetics, thinking back to every time he’d caught his parents slow dancing in the kitchen like two goofy teenagers at their first prom. Sam wasn’t any better than the rest of them, and watching the awkward giant that his little brother had become filled Dean with a happy swell of pride. 

Sam swayed with his tiny, perfect little bride around the dancefloor, the two grinning at each with the same blissful expressions they’d been wearing all night.

The two really were made for one another. 

Not that Dean believed in things like true love or soul mates, but if for a moment he decided to suspend his salty skepticism, he’d have to admit that Jess and Sam were the sort of happy endings that most people could only dream of.

“Come dance with me,” Lisa demanded, lacing her fingers through Dean’s and smiling brightly. 

He shook his head, smiling like an apology. “You know the answer to that.”

“Not drunk enough yet?” She prodded at him. “Because we can fix that.”

“I think you got a little turned around there, Lisa.” He grinned at his friend, reminding her, “You’re supposed to be keeping me  _ out _ of trouble, not getting me drunk.”

“So because you’re on pins and needles I don’t get to enjoy myself?”

He knocked their foreheads together, tucking a bit of her hair behind an ear. “I’ll behave myself. You go have fun―just not too much. You’ve got a husband and son waiting for you back home.”

She laughed, kissing his nose. “You know I like to make trouble, but for other people, not myself.”

“Yeah. I know.” He shooed her away, sending her off to enjoy herself while he guarded their empty table. 

There was something to be said for being part of the bride and groom’s family. It meant that Dean really had one of the best seats in the house. Their table had been situated at the back of the room, big bay windows behind them and the whole room and all the guests in front of them. From where Dean sat he could see the whole room and all the happy guests. He didn’t know most of the people here. There were only a few guests that had come up from Lawrance, it looked like nearly everyone else had to be school friends and colleagues of Sam and Jess’. Lots of friendly, clean-cut people milling around and laughing and drinking, and few dancing. 

It would have been easy to let himself get caught up in the happy flow of the party. Or at least it should have been. 

Watching Lisa dancing past in Nick’s arms put a bit of a damper on Dean’s optimism. 

Dean wasn’t angry, he was afraid. 

Afraid of what Nick might be telling Lisa as they danced close, their heads bowed together as they spoke quietly. 

Or worse, what Lisa might be telling Nick.

Bridges had been burned back when he and Nick were kids. Dean didn’t intend on trying to mend things. He wasn’t interested in an apology or excuses. 

He just wanted to make it through his brother’s wedding without getting into a fistfight. 

There were worse things that could have happened, but before Dean had a chance to really compile a list of things that would be somehow worse than his friend’s utter betrayal, Lisa was letting go of Nick and coming back to Dean.

“Oh my god, he’s even more awkward than you,” Lisa said with a grin as she reclaimed her chair and stole Dean’s drink.

“Why?” Was the only word that Dean seemed to be able to get out.

“It was an accident. I swear to god.” She held a hand up like she was being sworn in. “I went to go find your mom because I was hoping to get some more embarrassing stories about you―but she was dancing with your arch-nemesis. I asked to cut in, but instead of Mary I ended up with Nick.”

Dean shook his head.

“Did you know that he’d been stationed in Guam, just like my sister and her husband? Same base and everything.” Lisa finished off his wine. “Not at the same time, but still. What a coincidence, right?”

“Is that all you two talked about?” He asked uneasily.

“Well, he also tried to get me to go ask Jess when we’d be having cake, because apparently as her brother he’s not allowed to ask. And ok, but what the hell is going on with you Kansas boys? I thought  _ you  _ were tall, and then I met your family and I find out you’re the short one.”

“It’s something in the water,” Dean mumbled, only vaguely listening to her. Only a few yards away was Nick, and Nick was looking back at him. Nick was watching them talking, a very uncertain look on his face that softened his features and made him look so young. 

Their eyes met and, for the first time all night, Nick didn’t look away immediately.

Dean couldn’t do it.

He picked up his empty glass and left the table. 

_ Coward, coward, coward _ , Dean repeated to himself as he made a beeline to the bar.

Maybe he didn’t need to stay for cake. Sam might forgive him. Hell, Sam might not even notice if Dean left early. Then Dean could go back to his hotel and hide out for a couple days, until it was time to take his flight back home, and then he could happily never think about his childhood friend ever again.

But Dean wasn’t going to leave. 

Not yet. 

That would be letting Nick win, and Dean had already lost far too many times to that jerk over the years. Tonight would be different.

Dean wouldn’t leave until Nick did. 

So, he steeled himself and asked the bartender for a full glass of ‘ _ I don’t care, just whatever’s strongest’ _ , and got himself a questionably fruity looking drink and a dubious smile from the girl behind the counter.

The drink went down a little rough and Dean instantly wished that he’d been smart enough not to down it all in one go. 

Against whatever better judgment he had left, Dean ordered one more drink to go, though in his case ‘going’ only meant stepping outside to get some air. There were too many sounds and colors and he was grateful to make it outside and under the open sky. With the sounds of the reception muted, Dean let out a deep sigh and sank down to sit on a stone bench. 

He’d go back to the reception once he’d finished his drink and once all those knots in his stomach had loosened. 

It was a good enough plan, and under other circumstances sitting outside and letting his mind wander probably would have done the trick. He hadn’t counted on getting any company though. 

Certainly not any very tall and very unhappy looking company. Though Nick didn’t come outside wearing that frown. It was something that he put on the moment his eyes landed on Dean.

The two men looked more at the space around one another, which was a lot more indirect and challenging than eye contact would have been. It lasted only for a breath or two, then Nick was raising his phone in front of his face and putting on a very believable smile. 

“Hey,” Nick’s voice matched the curve of his lips. “What’s with the face-time?”

A man’s voice answered Nick, very gentle and very warm, “Because if I text you I can’t see your face, so I can’t tell if you’re lying when I ask how you’re doing.”

Nick didn’t look at Dean, but by the hunch of his shoulders and the few large steps he took in the opposite direction, it was clear that he was determined to keep up ignoring the other man. 

“I’m fine. I promise,” Nick said, his voice fading as he circled around a low fountain somewhere behind Dean’s back. “How are my girls? Are they behaving for you?”

Not turning his head and making it too obvious, Dean strained to hear the passing conversation. He reminded himself very firmly that he didn’t care one bit about Nick, or who the man might be talking to, or what he was talking about. Dean was far more interested in the drink in his hands and the view he had of the ongoing reception through the big windows. 

“Are they already asleep?” Nick was asking, shortly followed by a chuckle and, “There you two are. Hello. Are you two giving Chuck a hard time while Daddy’s gone?”

Dean felt his spine go rigid. 

Not that he cared at all. 

Nick wasn’t part of his life and hadn’t been for years, so nothing that Dean was overhearing was even slightly important to him. But he’d listened in on an awful lot of dinner conversation as his parents caught up with their part-time adopted son, and there had been exactly zero mention of Nick being a father.

Dean finished his drink, continuing not to care in the slightest, and he blamed that burning in his gut on the liquor instead of the conversation going on somewhere behind him. 

“I should probably head back to the reception,” resignation had entered Nick’s voice. “Yeah. I promise I’ll behave. Yeah… love you too. Good night.”

The inside of Dean’s cheek was hurting from how hard he was biting it. He tried to relax his shoulders and the knots in his stomach, and felt nearly confident that he at least would look calm if anyone happened to glance his way. 

But, as Nick came back around the fountain, before the other man could make it back into the party, Dean asked a little too loudly, “So, how drunk did you have to get to do it with a girl and have kids?”

Nick nearly missed a step, his nonchalant stride completely ruined. He recovered quickly though, jamming his hands into his pockets and walking away.

“I know you can hear me,  _ Luci _ ,” Dean surprised himself by how sing-song his words sounded. That last drink might have been a poor choice, but it was far too late to worry about that now. 

Nick shook his head, making it safely through the doors and back into the reception, leaving Dean alone on his bench with only his empty glass for company. 

A more sober man might have stayed out there, sorting through his feelings and not rushing into any questionable action. Dean, however, got to his feet and followed the other man inside. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a longer chapter, but I'm looking at it, knowing that I've actually finished writing this story, and I'm just super proud at how short the whole thing ended up being.
> 
> Those of you who have been with me for awhile will know that brevity is not one of my skills, so even if you readers aren't super excited that this story is only 9 chapters long? I'm super excited that I was able to stay on track for once X'D

\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

It was helpful that Nick was so damn tall. He was very easy to find in a crowd, and Dean strode across the room with a purpose in his steps. He could put up with a lot of things. He could be the bigger man and let certain insults go. Dean  _ hated _ being ignored though.

He wasn’t nearly drunk enough to think that chasing Nick down and confronting him was a good plan, but unfortunately, he also wasn’t sober enough to realize what a truly terrible plan it really was. 

Before he could get too far someone caught his arm, hauling him back, and with a frustrated sound Dean turned to explain to Lisa that he didn’t need help right now, he could handle this on his own. 

It wasn’t Lisa.

It was Sam―and Sam was a whole lot harder to argue with.

Dean’s baby brother still had his all-day smile firmly fixed in place, but his eyes dark with worry. “Hey… everything ok?” Sam asked, holding even tighter as Dean tried to pull away.

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” Dean lied.

“Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened,” Dean didn’t like having to be held accountable to anyone, not even his brother. He gritted his teeth, struggling to come up with any kind of believable excuse and instead blurted out the irritating truth, “That son of a bitch is just acting like a five-year-old and pretending he can’t hear me.”

A sigh of resignation softened Sam’s shoulders, all that worry melting away to show that exasperated ‘I knew it’ expression he did so well. A look that made it feel like Sam had expected this exact scenario all night long and had merely been holding his breath. 

“Hey, he started it,” Dean tried to shake his brother off but Sam was having none of it, “I asked him one question―just a simple, innocent question and he blew me off.”

“Can you not,” Sam pleaded. “Please, Dean. Not tonight.”

“Is there a better time you’d like me to tell him what a dick he is?”

That’s when the puppy eyes came out. Sam somehow managed to dip his head enough to look up at Dean, giving him the roundest, saddest, most pleading eyes. “It’s my wedding day, Dean. Tonight isn’t about anyone being a dick. It’s supposed to be about two best friends who fell in love, not… not about whatever bad happened between you and Nick twenty years ago. Can you please just keep it together for a little longer?”

Dean knew what ‘two friends’ his brother meant, but in his heart, Dean heard those words a little differently because Sam and Jess weren’t the only two idiots who made promises to each other back when they were kids. 

  
  
  
  
  


\----  **Late September, 2004** \---

“I’m bored,” Dean sang softly.

Nick didn’t even look up. He turned the page in his textbook as he flatly said, “Do your homework.”

“But…” Dean reached over, tracing the eraser end of his pencil up the inside curve of his friend’s foot, “I’m  _ bored _ .”

“Homework,” Nick repeated.

“Homework is boring,” he complained, letting a finger circle the sharp angles of Nick’s ankle bone. “You know a good way to get over being bored?”

“Just do your homework, Dean. I swear to god.” The faintest curve of a smile had started to tug the corners of Nick’s mouth though.

“All I’m saying is that it would be a lot easier for me to focus on reading about the Civil War if maybe we made out for a bit first.”

“No.”

“What if I read one more page? Can we take a break?”

“No.”

“Two more pages,” Dean was very willing to negotiate, especially because he could see Nick fighting harder and harder not to smile.

“The rest of the chapter,” was Nick’s counter offer. 

“The _ whole  _ chapter? Come on,” he sat up, abandoning his book to nestle against his friend’s side. “Just a tiny break first? Just the littlest, little tiny break from homework? Like, maybe just a two-minute break?”

“Because  _ you’re bored _ ?” Nick looked up from his own homework, his eyes getting caught on Dean’s mouth. “You do know that that’s not some kind of magic word for me, right? I don’t hear  _ ‘I’m bored _ ’ and suddenly my panties are getting wet. Your Dean Winchester charms don’t work on me.”

“See, that’s why I need more practice,” Dean tried to tease but his heart was in his throat, it was an effect that Nick had on him pretty much all the time since the night they’d snuck off to the treehouse. “If I can charm a son of a bitch like you, then I’ll be able to charm pretty much anyone.”

Nick laughed and then he said something, but it didn’t get through to Dean, he was too distracted by the line of his friend’s throat and wondering if there was a way that he’d be able to convince Nick that after seven nights of kissing in a row just to chase away boredom, the next logical step was obviously going to be necking.

But only if they were both  _ really  _ bored. 

Very suddenly NIck was pushing him, snorting softly as he laughed harder. “Don’t you look at me like that, Dean. I promised your mom and dad that we’d both have our homework done before dinner.”

Dean wasn’t sure exactly how he’d been looking at his friend, but if he had to guess he’d say it was probably at least a little predatory. He couldn’t help himself though. School had started back up for Dean a week ago. That meant a whole week of pretty girls, and somehow Dean still didn’t have a date lined up for the homecoming dance at the end of the month. 

He was fairly sure that a few girls had hinted that they wanted to go with him. 

But Dean wasn’t even sure if he was going to go to the dance. 

The same weekend there was going to be some sort of church conference in Topeka that was taking Mr. and Mrs. Williams out of town, and that meant that Nick would be staying the night at the Winchester’s house. 

The whole thing seemed stupid to Dean anytime he stopped himself to think about it. Stupid that he would rather stay home listening to music and playing video games with the boy from next door, instead of going to a school dance and probably leaving early to have sex in the back of the Impala with a girl from school. 

But then he’d look over at his friend and think about how the night before Nick had snuck through his window around midnight to lay on his bed with him and play video games, and how that had somehow lead to a very slow makeout session that had completely wrecked Dean’s ability to speak and had left him lying in bed alone, so wound up and so hard that he’d had to go take a shower as soon as Nick left.

Maybe it wasn’t quite a mystery why Dean was considering staying home, but at least for the time being he was determined to pretend that it was, because that felt like the only way that he was going to be allowed to keep things how they were. And how they were was good.

Or at least that’s what he thought. 

When he was tucked close to his friend, laughing and joking, and looking for good excuses to kiss the other boy, it was very easy to pretend that everything in their lives was ‘good’.

The next day, however, Dean came home from school to find Jess and Mom sharing a blanket on the couch while they watched cartoons. Sammy left Dean’s side in an instant, dropping his backpack and running to the little girl’s side. Jess wasn’t smiling back though and Mom was getting up quickly and walking towards Dean, who instantly felt dread curling tightly around his chest like a fist.

Before he managed to ask what happened, Mom took him by the strap of his backpack and led Dean into the kitchen. 

“Why isn’t Jess at school?” The question rushed out of Dean. “Is she ok? Is Nick ok?”

“Jess is fine,” Mom soothed in her soft and calming ‘doctor’s voice’. “She’s been here since early this morning. I just didn’t want to wake you boys up or worry you. Beth is still in the hospital, but she’s just under observation and I should be able to go get her tonight.”

“Why is Mrs. Williams in the hospital?” 

The look on his Mom’s face said enough and Dean’s stomach turned, the unease he felt quickly shifting into something worse.

“Nick?” He couldn’t get any other words out past the tightness in his throat. 

“He’s up in your room,” Mom said, quickly taking hold of Dean’s shoulders before he could make a dash towards the stairs. “He needs to rest right now. He’s ok. He just needs to rest.”

Mary was a doctor. It meant that she probably knew what she was talking about, and Dean had never really known Mom to be wrong about anything. But right then he couldn’t believe her. 

He needed to see for himself. 

He needed to  _ know  _ that his friend was alright. 

Dean took off sprinting up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time and that still wasn’t fast enough. He threw open his bedroom door and felt his breath catch. 

He couldn’t say what he was expecting to see, but finding Nick sprawled over the bed, snoring softly, nearly knocked Dean’s knees out from under him with a wave of relief.

With his heart still hammering, Dean crossed the room and sank down on the corner of the bed. “You scared me, man,” he whispered and reached out to rest a hand over his friend’s knee.

Nick was fast asleep, no response at all to the company beside him, and that was fine. Dean kept his hand on the other boy’s leg as he tried to calm his own racing heart. 

Floorboards creaked and Dean looked up to see Mary standing in the doorway. The pinched frown she wore made her look somewhere between angry and sad and Dean thought that he understood that feeling a little too well right then. 

“He’s on some pretty strong pain meds right now,” Mom whispered, her eyes on the sleeping boy. “Come on downstairs, Dean. Let him sleep.”

There was that twist again. That awful feeling that made Dean’s hands shake. “But he’s ok?”

“His arm’s pretty badly broken, and he’s got some bumps and scrapes. But yeah, he’s ok.”

Dean looked at his friend, and the blankets pulled up to the other boy’s shoulders, suddenly feeling overly aware of the dark and angry purple marks on Nick’s neck and cheek. 

“Can I stay up here with him?” Dean asked softly. 

Sighing, Mom repeated herself, “He needs to sleep.”.

“I promise not to wake him up,” he swore, fingers curling in the blanket like if he could hold tight enough it would somehow keep him from getting kicked out of the room.

Mary sighed again, slowly shaking her head. “Just for a little bit, then I need you to come downstairs and keep an eye on Sammy. Ok?”

Dean nodded, because he’d agree to anything right then, anything at all that kept him right where he was.

The bedroom door was left open and Dean didn’t care. As soon as he heard Mom’s footsteps retreating back down the stairs, Dean laid down on the bed, stretching out along Nick’s side and putting himself as close as he could manage to without touching the other boy.

He didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep until he was blinking awake, feeling very groggy and having a hard time focusing on the blue eyes looking back at him. 

“Hey,” Nick mouthed, not making any sound other than his slow breaths.

“Hey,” Dean whispered back before he re-noticed those dark bruises and remembered why Nick was here with him. “Hey, Lu. You ok?”

The other boy nodded faintly. 

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Nick whispered with a halfhearted smile, “and here I was worried I might be looking a little too cute in your pajamas, and I’d hate that.”

A sharp sound, almost like a laugh, managed to squeak out of Dean’s tight throat. He reached over, lifting the edge of the blanket to see one of his t-shirts hugging the other boy’s chest. 

“I hate that my clothes always look better on you,” Dean tried to joke but the words were brittle and his hand shook as he set his fingertips against the cherry-red cast that started just above the bend in Nick’s elbow. “I thought you’d have picked pink.”

“I wanted pink, but the nurse said no.”

“That’s some sexist bull shit,” Dean trailed his fingers over the rough surface, remembering all the broken bones that he’d had over the years and knowing how bad Nick must be hurting. “Pink is totally your color.” Dean didn’t feel at all like smiling, but he did his best. “Do I get to sign your cast?”

“I’ll hate you forever if you don’t,” Nick threatened, then cleared his throat and tried to sit up.

“Mom said you need to sleep. I don’t think you’re supposed to…” Dean rolled onto his back, watching his friend awkwardly stretch out over him to grab the glass of water from the nightstand. 

Nick cleared his throat again. “Is Jess ok?”

“Yeah,” Dean pushed himself up to his elbows, taking the cup from his friend’s hand and setting it down for him. “She’s watching cartoons with Sam.”

Smiling, Nick laid back down, his eyes drifting closed. “Good.”

Dean watched his friend, listening to the hammering of his own heart. The words were hard to get out, but he grit his teeth and did his best, “I don’t know how to help.”

“I’m ok right now.”

“I-I don’t mean right now,” Dean struggled with himself, hating the helpless feeling. “I mean… I don’t know what I mean. Just… help with  _ everything _ , I guess.”

Nick lost his smile. His eyes opened hardly more than little slits as he stared up at the ceiling. He didn’t seem to have an answer. He didn’t seem to have anything at all that he was ready to say. Dean’s friend just lay there looking off into space before slowly shaking his head.

It tore at Dean. 

If Nick had asked something crazy of him, something that Dean couldn’t possibly do, at least that would have been a goal. It would have given him a direction to move in and something he could take apart into manageable pieces.

But Nick’s expression said nothing but surrender and there wasn’t anything to do. Nick was resigned. This was his life and there wasn’t any way for Dean to change it, or fix it, or help. 

Dean’s hands had started to hurt, knuckles white, fingernails digging into his palms. Right then he wanted to throw punches. He wanted to break something, preferably  _ someone _ , preferably the man who lived next door. 

“Hey,” Nick whispered like he always did, his good hand reaching out to rest on Dean’s shoulder “You bored?”

Dean tried to cover all those thoughts of violence with a smile. “No. I was just thinking. Sorry.” 

“You wanna,” a memory of a smile passed over the other boy’s face, “maybe just lay here for a while and keep me company?”

“Yeah. Of course, Lu.” Dean settled back down, folding his arms over his chest as he tried to relax, before a sudden jolt of understanding slapped him in the face. “ _ Oh… _ you meant... yeah. Ok. I’m never going to say no to kissing, though. Like, you don’t even have to ask. Just go ahead and  _ always  _ assume that I’m bored.”

Nick laughed, turning to head towards Dean, all his awful bruises hidden against the pillow as he bit his lip.

It was a pretty offer. 

One that Dean had never turned down before in his life. 

He hesitated though, lost in the stormy depths of the other boy’s eyes, all those familiar butterflies fluttering back to life and starting to swarm against the cage of Dean’s ribs. 

The smooth skin of Nick’s cheek was sunkissed and pink. Dean traced the faint freckles he could see, fingers skimming the other boy’s forehead, down his nose, before slowly touching the soft curve of his mouth.

Nick let out a sharp breath of laughter, asking, “You gonna’ tell me how adorable I am again?” 

“I could,” Dean agreed, pressing his thumb to the upturned corner of Nick’s lips, “but I’m pretty sure you already know.”

“Well, yeah, but I feel real shitty right now,” Nick made his way through the words slowly, dragging his mouth over the rough pad of Dean’s thumb as he demanded, “so tell me anyways.”

Words would have worked, but kissing Nick was a much more direct and fantastic way to tell him exactly what Dean thought about him. 

Unexpectedly, Nick kissed back.

What had been an impulse for Dean, a stupid sudden desire to close that physical distance between them shouldn’t have been answered so eagerly. 

The two of them only ever kissed for fun. Just a way to pass the time and to work off a little of that extra energy. 

As far as Dean knew, Nick wasn’t even slightly attracted to him. They were friends. Just friends.

Only, this time it was different. 

This wasn’t the two friends laughing and smoking and blowing off some steam. 

Nick was pushing Dean back against the mattress with a tight handful of Dean’s shirt while he held him down, kissing him deep and slow, his mouth making all sorts of offers that they hadn’t ever talked about before. 

As nice as kissing was though, kissing was also dangerous, especially with the bedroom door still open. 

A little breathless, Dean pulled away, heat rushing up his neck. “I, um… door,” was as close as he could manage to get to a complete sentence right then. He really didn’t want to, but he made himself push Nick off so he could get up and close and lock his bedroom door. 

He turned back to see Nick sitting up and watching him with a raised eyebrow. 

“Did I read this wrong?” Dean asked hesitantly, reaching behind him for the doorknob. “It’s cool if you’re not interested. I just thought―”

“I spent all last night and most of today in the hospital, Dean. I look like shit. I  _ feel _ like shit. What the hell is it that you think we’re doing?”

“Locking the door so my mom doesn’t catch us and freak out?” Dean offered uncertainty. 

“Catch us doing  _ what _ ?” Nick pressed. He knew. He obviously knew. It would have been impossible for anyone to misread those kisses, especially for Nick to be doing the misreading considering he was the one who’d been slipping his tongue into Dean’s mouth.

“I mean,” Dean fidgeted, wishing he understood why he felt nervous over answering a question that he’d have gleefully answered in any other situation. “I was kind of thinking of some over the clothes stuff. Just a little third base action, so we both get to have some fun, but nothing too… um,” Dean wanted to say ‘gay’ but he knew enough to know that would have been probably the worst word choice he could make, so he skipped over that part with a sharp breath before continuing, “but now you’re looking at me like that and I’m pretty sure I screwed up somewhere. So… I’m sorry?”

“Ok,” Nick raised an eyebrow, sizing Dean up for an uncomfortably long time before speaking. “I was just teasing you, but that was one hell of a fast back peddling and possibly the worst apology I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Look, you make me nervous sometimes. I don’t wanna screw this up,” Dean was willing to admit it, embarrassment making his face hot as he struggled to keep eye contact with the boy on the bed. 

“Dean Winchester is nervous about sex?” Nick managed to look shocked, placing a hand to his heart, his mouth making a perfect little O. “This… this is unheard of. I don’t know what to do.”

“Shut up. I am  _ not _ nervous about,” he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the bed.

“About… over the clothes  _ stuff _ ?” Nick offered, not helping in the slightest. 

Dean struggled not to squirm under his friend’s gaze as Nick’s pale eyes danced over him, lingering in unexpected places. 

“I’m open to other suggestions,” Dean said, scrambling to gather up his usual confidence that seemed to have picked a hell of a time to leave him. “What were you thinking about?”

Nick looked down at his lap, a lopsided grin forming and fading away far too quickly. His good hand moved unsteadily up the cast on his arm. “Really trying not to do too much thinking right now, cause then I start to remember that I’ve got to go home tomorrow.” He looked about to say something else, but all that came out was a sharp sound. 

The universe was demanding a whole lot of mental flexibility from Dean right then. A whole lot of jumping between very different feelings, and he was positive that he couldn’t keep up for very much longer. 

Dean abandoned his closed door, coming to kneel on the carpet beside the bed. He folded his arms on top of the blankets, turning an adoring face up towards his friend. “Stay.”

“I wish I could.”

“You can. Just  _ stay _ ,” Dean didn’t know any other way to explain how simple this actually was. “Just don’t leave… until we turn eighteen and then you and me can go anywhere you want.”

“Together?”

“Well obviously.” Dean snorted. “You’ve seen me doing homework. If I don’t have some kind of study buddy there’s no way I’d be able to make it in college.”

“Ah,” that smile of Nick’s slid back into place and a little of the tension bled out of his tight shoulders. “So you want me for my superior GPA. It’s finally starting to make some sense.”

“Well, obviously your brains are a big turn on, but… come on. It’s really all about that ass of yours.”

A startled burst of laughter escaped Nick, his face instantly turning a bright red.

Dean latched onto that spark of joy he saw, grinning up at his friend and pressing the subject. “That night we went to the lake? You were laying there on the docks and hot damn, Luci. I just wanted to,” Dean made grabby gestures with his hands.

Nick reached over and slapped his hands, looking nearly too embarrassed to even talk.

“You know, Mom’s probably not going to call us down for dinner for a little while,” Dean grinned into the offer, “we still have time to… fool around a little.”

“You saying you’re bored?”

“I’m saying I think you’re cute and I like kissing you.” Not exactly a confession that Dean had intended to make that night, but the look on his friend’s face was absolutely worth the embarrassment. 

It took a moment for Nick to recover and find his usual sass. With a crooked smile, he pointed out, “Well, I did tell you I was a good kisser.”

“You did.”

“You’re finally starting to get a bit better yourself.”

Dean pushed himself up, his knees making the mattress dip as he edged closer. “Oh am I?”

“A little bit, yeah,” Nick’s face was still bright red, but his voice was clear and his eyes steady as he teased, “I think you might be ready to try something a bit more advanced.”

“Yeah?” Dean slid closer until their knees touched. “I don’t know. I’m not the smartest kid. We may have to go over it a few times… slowly.”

Nick shook his head, laughing softly, before finally saying. “You’re such a smartass. Just come over here and kiss me already.”

Dean was more than happy to. 

All too soon though there was knocking at his door, the handle rattling softly and Mom’s voice raising like a warning, “If you boys are both feeling well enough to be smoking, I want you to put it out and come downstairs to set the table for dinner.”

“Y-yes, Ma’am,” Nick managed to say, shoving at one of Dean’s shoulders, forcing Dean’s mouth away from his neck. 

“You feeling any better, Nick honey?” Mom asked, lingering on the other side of the door like a monster.

Dean hardly heard his friend’s answer, laughing breathily as he hid his face against Nick’s chest, not taking his hand from between Nick’s legs until the pushing started to turn into light hitting. 

“We’ll be right down,” Nick was saying, somehow managing to carry on a polite little conversation despite his very dark blush and the hungry look in his eyes. As soon as they heard Mom’s steps fading away, Nick hissed, “Stop it,” shying away as Dean’s hands crept up under his shirt.

Laying there on the bed with the comfortable weight of his friend on top of him, Dean couldn’t do much more than grin, even if it was starting to make his cheeks hurt. “Did you know you’re extra cute when you’re turned on?”

Nick made some sort of indignant sound and sat up, kneeling between Dean’s legs, trying to smooth a hand through his messy hair. “I’m  _ not  _ cute.”

“You know, we’ve probably got a few minutes before she comes up and yells at us again,” Dean said on a sigh, his eyes slowly roaming over his friend’s rumpled clothes and the way his stolen sweatpants had been pushed low after all Dean’s curious petting.

Nick was gorgeous.

And Dean couldn’t help himself as he offered, “I think that’s enough time for a quick blow job.”

“Oh, you wish,” Nick’s words were choked with laughter and he wasn’t looking at Dean. 

“I mean, obviously I’ve never done it before,” Dean sat up, biting his lip, “but I think I’d probably be pretty good at it, as long as you’re willing to be patient while I figure things out.”

Even Nick’s ears were red then. “I-I’m going to steal some jeans and go get dressed in the bathroom.”

“Did I go too far?”

Nick nodded, that deliciously awkward grin of his painfully flattening out and his eyebrows drawing together with uncertainty. 

“Ok, sorry,” Dean agreed quickly, not excited, but at the same time accepting, that that’s where the line would be drawn between them. “But if you maybe change your mind in a few days or a week or whatever when you’re feeling better, you’ll let me know?” 

Nick swallowed and nodded before offering the smallest smile. “I’ll keep you updated, you weirdo.”

Dean would take the name calling, it helped to soften the sudden unpleasant feeling that he might have accidentally made his friend uncomfortable by overstepping their nice little arrangement. “You think you’ll stay the night tonight?”

“Probably,” Nick shrugged, getting up a little unsteadily and going to Dean’s dresser. 

“You want me to sleep downstairs?”

Nick looked back, his head tilting, his kiss bitten lips quirking oddly. “No. Why would I want you to sleep downstairs?”

“I don’t know, Luci.” Dean ran his hands through his hair, “Maybe that would be a normal thing to want if your best friend offers to go down on you and you suddenly need a little space.”

“I’m not saying I want space. I sleep better next to you,” Nick hugged the pair of jeans he’d found to his chest. “But just so you know, most straight guys don’t go around offering other guys blowjobs.”

“I apologized.” 

“You’re so weird,” Nick suddenly raised his voice, and then grit his teeth and took a harsh breath to calm himself. “Sorry.  _ Sorry _ . I just never fucking know when you’re joking or not.”

“You want me to stop joking around with you?”

“I want…” Nick's toes were curling and uncurling in the carpet as he shifted his weight from side to side. “Yeah. I need you to stop joking about stuff like this.”

“Alright, I can do that.” Dean nodded sharply. “So, super serious about it and not joking at all... if you change your mind at some point about the blowjob, let me know, and if that offer is still a bit weird for you, then I’m ok sleeping on the couch.”

Every bit of visible skin on Nick flushed pink. “Why? Why can’t you be fucking serious for five seconds?”

Dean ran his hands over his face and then scrubbed them through his hair. “I  _ am _ being serious. What the hell other way can I get it through your dumb head that I think you’re one hundred percent do-able? I mean… you’ve had sex right? Didn’t that sort of clue you in on how hot you are? You’ve got to have noticed what you look like.”

“I know exactly what I look like, Dean.” Nick bit each word off sharply, the red of his cheeks starting to look more like irritation than embarrassment. “I just don’t know why  _ you  _ noticed.”

An accusation that brought Dean right back around to the fact that this little crush he had, all those butterflies in his stomach whenever Nick smiled at him, they weren't mutual feelings.

The two of them were friends.

Just friends.

Dean was probably just going to need a reminder now and then.

“Look, man, I don’t have a say in what gets me hot,” he gestured down at his own lap like that was evidence enough. “But I get it bothers you. It’s cool. It’s whatever. I won’t bring it back up.”

Dark spots formed in the hollows of Nick’s cheeks. He didn’t say anything. Whatever he was feeling, he kept it boiling just beneath the surface as he turned and left the room. 

Even though Dean wasn’t the most emotionally in-tune human being, he could feel the weight of all the things his friend wasn’t saying. 

There was more bad than good going on in Nick’s life right then, and he didn’t owe Dean any explanations.

But sitting there alone in his room, with the lingering scent of Nick still on his skin, that was the first time in Dean’s young life that he actually wished for a long and uncomfortable talk about what they were both feeling. 

He settled for going downstairs to help with dinner. 

Mrs. Williams was there. Home from the hospital just like her son and looking absolutely awful in Dean’s opinion. Nick looked like the picture of good health when sitting next to his mother. Her bruises were so much worse, and the haunted look in her eyes seemed to go much deeper. 

On a normal night, as soon as the dishes had been washed and the table cleaned, Dean would take off to his room with Sam on his heels so they could play video games until bedtime. Plans changed though, and Mom asked Dean to stay downstairs and keep an eye on the kids while the adults all went to the back porch to talk. 

Dean decided not to argue that Sam was too old to need a babysitter, because Nick had gone to sit in the front room and watch TV with Jess, so that’s where Dean wanted to be. 

There was a small moment of awkwardness as he stood looking at the couch, trying to decide where it was safe to sit, but Nick solved the problem for him by reaching out to grab Dean’s hand and pull him down. It wasn’t a huge couch, and there was no way for Dean to sit where he was without their shoulders and hips and knees touching. 

He didn’t mind. 

He also didn’t mind that Nick was still holding his hand. 

It was a little weird with Sam and Jess on the other end of the couch, but Dean pulled his knees up, heels digging into the cushion, and letting his and Nick’s twined fingers hide in the little space he’d made between them.

“Not mad?” Dean whispered.

“I’ve been mad at you since the day we met,” Nick whispered back. “I’ll get over it eventually.”

He grinned, taking it almost like a challenge, though before he could come up with something perfectly annoying to say his ears pricked up at hearing his brother saying his name. 

Sammy was talking to Jess, pointing to the far side of the room where an acoustic guitar was leaning against the fireplace. “He’s learning to play to impress his crush.”

Jess giggled, looking back at Dean with bright eyes. “You’ve got a crush?”

“No,” Dean said a little too quickly, his insides twisting as he fought not to look over at Nick.

“It’s some girl at school,” Sam grinned, clearly having no idea how wrong he was. “I haven’t figured out who yet, but he starts getting that stupid look on his face whenever I bring her up.”

Hugging herself, Jess beamed at Dean. “And you’re learning to play guitar for her? That’s so romantic.”

“I― no.” Dean did his best not to squirm. He couldn’t care less what Jess or Sam thought. What he did care about though was Nick carefully pulling his hand back. “I don’t have a crush on anyone at school,” Dean tried to explain to his friend

“Are you any good?” Nick asked, gently pushing at Dean, nudging him off the couch. “Play something for us.”

“I’m not really good enough to play for anyone yet,” he tried to make excuses, but Nick was smiling softly up at him, and really, Dean did love showing off more than almost anything else. “Ok. Fine. But I’m not singing or anything, so don’t ask.”

“I’ve heard you singing along with the radio,” Nick’s smile went sharp with a flash of teeth, “I’d literally pay you money to not sing.”

“Bitch,” Dean tried to sound offended, but ended up laughing as he picked up the guitar and sat cross-legged on the floor. “So like, this is my dad’s guitar. He got it back when he was in high school, so it’s really freaking old and doesn’t sound great.”

“Stop making up excuses and play already,” Nick demanded.

Dean almost never felt self-conscious around people he liked. Not since middle school at least. He could joke and flirt and be wonderfully charming around just about anyone. And then there was Nick. 

All Nick needed to do was smile and Dean instantly felt like the clumsiest idiot that ever walked the planet.

He had some serious doubts that he’d be able to play with Nick watching him. 

The plan had been to get good enough to not worry what the next chord would be, and then Dean would sit on his bed to play, leaving the window open so that Nick could hear from his own room.

Crisp night air and a property line between them made the scene more romantic in Dean’s mind. 

Sitting on the living room rug, with the muted TV on behind his back, and an audience of three, was about as far from that romantic vision as Dean could get, but he also couldn’t tell Nick no.

He bought his nerves some time, tightening and untightening the keys while he plucked at the strings. 

Dean nervously started to play, mouthing the words to help himself keep time as he clumsily moved through the chord progression. He watched his left hand making sure his fingers were going to the right places, feeling far too awkward to look back at the couch until he made it through a full verse and chorus. 

“That’s, uh, that’s all I’ve got memorized,” he said with a grin, pointedly looking at Jess, because she was the one who understood that learning a song to play for someone else was supposed to be romantic. 

The kid was grinning at him, the same sort of toothy wildness in the expression as her brother always got. “I wish a boy would play music for me,” she said with a wistful sigh.

“You know,” Dean laid the guitar flat over his lap, smiling back at Jess, “I’m sure there’s at least one boy who’s gonna’ try.” 

“Yeah?” She swayed side to side, sneaking a little peek at Sam who looked fairly oblivious. 

Which made Jess’ excitement somehow even cuter. 

Laughing, Dean shook his head, using the little movement as a means to disguise his glance in Nick’s direction. 

Confusion was the most visible expression on the other boy’s face. “You decided to learn to play guitar for your crush, and the first song you picked was a gospel song?” He asked haltingly.

“You said you only knew how to play church songs,” Dean shrugged. “I wanted to be able to play something you might know. Plus Johnny Cash totally did a recording of it, so it’s like… only half church-y.”

“You learning to play a different song for your girl-crush?”

Frustrated that his friend could be so beautiful and yet still so stupid, Dean let out an irritated breath and said, “I’m only learning the one song,  _ Luci _ .” 

The corners of Nick’s mouth twisted down with a renewed look of confusion.

Dean got up and put the guitar back, before moving over to the DVD shelf so he could pretend to look at movies while waiting for the heat he felt to leave his cheeks. “So, um, anyone care what movie I put on?”

Jess wanted Princess Bride, and Sam wasn’t good at arguing with Jess. Nick’s only answer was more frowning. 

So Dean put on Princess Bride and reclaimed his little corner of the couch, his side pressed against his friend’s so they could both be overly aware of one another while they watched the movie in silence, sharing only the occasional uncertain side-eyed glance. 

Midway through the movie Nick’s boney fingers brushed against Dean’s. 

The only thing that Dean was positive about at this point in their friendship, was that he was absolutely awful at reading his friend’s moods. Did the fact that Nick was slowly and deliberately lacing their fingers together mean that he was bored, or that he was feeling the need for some human contact, or that he finally understood and was ok with the fact that Dean’s feelings went beyond simply wanting to bone?

Dean himself wasn’t actually sure that he really understood and was ok with his own feelings. 

That didn’t stop him from tangling fingers with his friend, running his thumb in circles over the sharp ridges of Nick’s knuckles and the soft dip of his palm. Laughing softly, Nick drew his hand back. They shared a small smile and Dean looked away first. 

A grin pulled at his cheeks when he felt his friend’s arm settle along the back of the couch, very nearly around Dean’s shoulders. It was an easy stretch, just a casual little move that Dean himself had done at least a dozen times to girls he liked, and he had to admit that it was a very different feeling to be on the receiving end. 

More than usual, Dean wished that they were alone, because there was something unexpectedly nice and safe feeling being sheltered against his friend. Dean lightly elbowed Nick though, grinning to soften his words as he whispered, “Not right now.”

“Not  _ what _ ?” Nick stretched his other arm out as well, resting his cast on the couch’s back, behind his sister’s head. 

Dean shook his head, wanting to point out that his friend was insane, but also not wanting to draw any attention to them. Sam and Jess might not notice or care, but they also might really notice and  _ really _ care, and it was best to not get the kids involved in whatever this was.

Even if Sam somehow didn’t care that his brother had something going with the boy next door, Sam couldn’t keep a secret to save his life―and Dean could almost guarantee that their parents would have some issues with it. 

So, he stayed quietly and comfortably where he was until he heard the backdoor opening, then as casually as Dean could manage, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and smiled innocently at the adults. 

Mom’s smile didn’t reach her tired eyes as she turned to Dean. “Honey, Beth is going to be staying here tonight. Can you go put clean sheets on your bed for her?”

It was really more of a demand than a question, and it meant that Dean was getting kicked out of his own room. He felt his shoulders go tight and an argument start to boil up inside of him, but then he saw Mrs. William, and Dean nodded and got up. 

For some reason, Nick followed him upstairs and Dean couldn’t help but tease, “You’ve only got one arm, Lu. You’re not going to be much help.”

“Good thing I didn’t plan on helping,” the other boy offered. 

Dean rolled his eyes and stripped the blanket and sheets from his bed, tossing them all in a big pile on the floor and then sighing. “What are you doing?”

Nick kicked more of Dean’s dirty clothes into the open closet. “You’re a slob, and I love you, but your room is gross and my mom’s gonna hate it.”

“She’s stealing my bed. She doesn’t get to complain,” Dean gathered up the bedding and hesitated before shoving it all into the closet as well. 

“I don’t want her coming down to sleep on the couch with me and sending you back up here,” Nick said pointedly, closing the closet and assessing the clutter of school books and papers on the floor beside Dean’s desk. 

“Oh,” Dean’s voice almost squeaked and he hated it. He cleared his throat and picked up more of his mess, and tried not to think about why his friend’s words would suddenly bring back all those stupid butterflies. 

He got the bed made without letting himself get too distracted by the fact that Nick was casually going through his things while he cleaned. 

“Stop being nosy,” he finally said, pulling a book from Nick’s hand. 

“I’m just making sure that there’s no secret porn that might fall out if Mom bumps into something.”

“I don’t keep my porn with my school stuff,” Dean said a little defensively, shoving the notebooks into his backpack, then uneasily going to his bed and pulling out the few magazines from between the mattresses and tucking them into the closet as well. He paused and looked back at his friend. “I’m never in your room… where do you hide yours?”

“Don’t have any.”

“Not like any Sports Illustrated or anything?”

Nick shook his head, coughing softly before saying, “If I wanna see a little skin I just look out my bedroom window. I’ve got this really hot neighbor who doesn’t close his curtains when he’s changing clothes.”

Dean laughed, his stomach ticking as those butterflies swarmed inside of him, and he waved off the teasing by quickly fleeing his room to go find some clean sheets. He didn’t know if he would ever get used to someone teasing him the way that Nick did, but he liked it that way. Dean enjoyed the dizzying feeling of freefall every time his friend smiled at him or joked about something that ‘friends’ probably shouldn’t joke about. 

____________________________________________

The fold-out mattress inside the couch had never been comfortable, and Dean had been too tall to properly fit on it for years. Laying out on the lumpy thin mattress, however, seemed more ‘appropriate’ for two friends than if they just tucked together on the couch cushions like normal. 

The arrangement didn’t seem to bother Nick much though, he’d curled on his side to watch the late-night infomercials. It was the same as he’d done back at the beginning of summer when he’d started staying with them. Lapsing into long silences while staring blankly at the screen. 

Dean missed all the earlier jokes and smiles.

He even missed Nick frowning at him. 

Nick having feelings of any sort was better than when he got quiet and distant like he was right then. 

The rest of the house had been quiet for nearly an hour. 

The two of them weren’t likely to be overheard, but even still, Dean kept his voice at a whisper as he leaned close. “You ok?” He asked, resting his chin on his friend’s shoulder.

Nick made an indifferent noise, tipping his head back so that their cheeks touched. 

“Just thinking?”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna hit me if I say you’re too pretty to worry yourself with all that thinking?”

Nick reached back and pinched Dean’s side. Hard. 

Dean winced, rolling away and smiling because of the hint of amusement he could see on his friend’s half-lit face.

“You’re not nearly as cute as you think you are,” Nick complained. 

“I absolutely am,” he argued, folding his hands over his stomach. “In fact, I think with a little more work I might come pretty damn close to being as cute as you.”

“Shut up, Dean.” Nick turned away from the TV screen, tucking his broken arm up against his chest. “What would all those pretty girls at school say if they knew you kept calling a boy ‘cute’?”

“I think that after one look at you, they’d all agree with me,” Dean grinned at the other boy’s attention settling full on him. “Then I think they’d all be pretty damn disappointed that they don’t have a chance with you.”

Nick shook his head, not quite hiding his faint smile. A smile that faded again too quickly, and he turned his face towards the TV again. When he spoke his voice was flat, all the words measured and careful like he was reading from a textbook, “You could have picked to learn any song to play for your girl-crush at school. Why’d you pick Poor Wayfaring Stranger?”

Sighing at the return of his non-existent girl-crush, Dean shook his head. “Was driving home from school with Sammy. It was on one of the cassette tapes. It just… it made me think of you.”

“Why?”

Dean shifted awkwardly, tugging at the hem of his shirt. “Dude, I don’t know. It just did.”

“I don’t get you.”

“What’s not to get?” Dean looked over. “I’m a pretty simple guy.”

Nick’s smile was back and gone again like a flash of lightning, his eyes flicking over to Dean. “You think we’ll stay friends?”

The question caught him off guard for a moment, like most of Nick’s questions tended to do. But once the surprise wore off, Dean laughed. “Already told you, Nicky, we’re leaving this shit-hole of a town together. We’re leaving for college together in a year, or if you can’t last that long then we’re running away from home together. All I need is five minutes to grab some clothes and tell Sammy goodbye and we’re gone.”

Like there was a rule somewhere that Nick wasn’t allowed to be happy for too long, his eyebrows pulled together. 

“You’ve got to promise not to leave without me, jerk.” Dean tried to keep his voice light and teasing, but it really was as serious as he’d been all night. “I’m pretty attached to you, and your dumb face, and I’d have a hard time sleeping if you just up and left one day and I didn’t know where you went.”

“You wouldn’t care,” Nick snorted softly, flatly dismissing Dean’s open and honest concern. “And I wasn’t talking about us leaving for college.”

It was Dean’s turn to frown.

“I  _ meant  _ do you think we’ll stay friends if we have sex?”

Few people had the power to render Dean speechless. Nick was definitely one of them though. 

He lay there, not sure if he should look at his friend, or the ceiling, or the lady on the TV who was selling one of a kind hand-painted purses. Dean let out a long breath, his thoughts jumbled together, confused and uncertain, until one bit of clarity floated to the surface.

“Is that what’s got you all weird today?” Dean asked, feeling like he’d found a missing piece to a puzzle. 

Nick rolled over, angling his back towards Dean. He didn’t answer. He didn’t offer anything. 

“Fuck, Nick.” Dean put his hands over his face. “I didn’t mean to… I… I like you. I like you a lot, ok? But you’re my friend first. Don’t feel like you’ve got to…” his stomach twisted in knots, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. “You already said no. I’m cool with that. Pretend I never brought it up at all― like legit, I never kissed you. We just pretend nothing happened. If… that’s ok with you.”

Nick didn’t move, his shoulders stayed tight, tucked up around his ears.

Over the course of the summer, never once had Dean considered how truly awful it might be that he’d started noticing the feelings he had for his friend. With every girl he’d ever dated, things had gone in a very specific order: physical attraction, physical affection, lots of arguing, and ending with being no longer on speaking terms. 

Dean had no idea how, or if it was even possible, to switch it up and go from friendship to anything else, and he’d been so caught up trying to navigate those uncharted waters he’d never really stopped to consider what all of this might do to his friend. 

“You wanna take Sammy and Jess to go get ice cream tomorrow?” Dean offered the first unrelated thing that he could think of, because he needed to hear Nick say something, anything at all, to know that they were still ok. 

“We’ve all got school tomorrow,” Nick said haltingly. 

“Fuck school,” Dean let his arms come down hard at his sides, fists hitting the thin mattress. “Your arm’s broken. You don’t have to go to school.”

“Pretty sure that I’ll still have to go to school,” he sighed and rolled onto his back, his face turning towards Dean’s. He opened and closed his mouth, chewing on a small frown like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t get the words right.

“You wanna go to sleep and we can argue about ice cream tomorrow?”

Nick licked his lips, and in the shifting light from the television, it was almost possible to miss the blush that darkened his cheeks and ears. “I want… I want to kiss you, Dean." He took a deep breath and let the rest all come spilling out with a wide-eyed look of fear like the confession was an accident he couldn't stop. "I want to screw you stupid, and I have all summer. But if we have sex and you peace out afterwards because things get weird, I…” his voice trailed off and he shook his head. 

Dean hadn’t expected to hear his own feelings recited to him so clearly and simply. 

Feeling more than a little stunned, Dean laughed in a high, almost nervous way and said what he felt they both needed to hear right then. “We’re kind of stupid.”

“You’re kind of stupid,” Nick shot back, then chuckled, his face softening.

They lay there on the too-small bed, television sounds almost masking their awkward, but somehow relieved sounding laughter.

It took longer than he'd like to admit to work up the courage to speak again, but Dean shifted his body an inch or two closer and smiled bravely as he asked, "You wanna ditch the kids tomorrow? Maybe just you and me can go get ice cream… like a date?”

Nick’s laughter tapered off into a small, strangled sound. 

“You can just say no if you don't want to,” Dean back-peddled quickly, tripping over his own words. “Friends with benefits would be fine too. Or just friends…” he took a deep breath and coughed as it caught in his throat. His friend had told him something weeks ago, something that Dean had deliberately tried to forget. “But you don’t date. Do you?”

“Dean…”

“It’s cool too." He firmly fixed a grin into place. "I know no one measures up to your  _ secret crush _ , not even someone as awesome as me. But see, I can live with that, because I get to be your best friend, and that son of a bitch doesn't even know you’ve got the hots for him.” 

The vice gripping his chest loosened the moment a surprised burst of laughter escaped Nick’s sudden and twisting smile. 

Dean wasn't sure why exactly his friend was laughing right then, but he'd happily take the small victory for what it was. Trying to coax even more of that bright and awkward joy out of Nick, Dean offered, “If you do ever get over that idiot though, and maybe want to date this idiot here? Let me know. I’ll keep a spot open for you.” 

Dean winked at his friend, wanting to make sure that Nick knew there were no hard feelings. He’d been told ‘no’ before. He was a big boy and could handle it, especially with that beautiful clarity between them. 

Nick thought he was hot.

Dean’s friend wanted to kiss him, and had for months, and that did wonders for the little wound that Dean hadn’t known he’d been nursing. 

However, those weren't thoughts he really had a chance to dwell on. 

Between incredulous laughter, stifled giggles so they wouldn’t wake up the rest of the house, Nick slid his good hand over Dean’s cheek and pulled him into a deep kiss. The kind of kiss that made Dean’s mind go pleasantly blank and his heart pound. One kiss that rapidly turned into too many kisses to keep track of, leaving Dean gasping and hot all over as he pulled his arms around his friend's neck, carding his fingers through Nick’s short, soft hair. 

Dean may have whimpered just a touch as his friend pulled away, but he did his best to mask the sound with a grin and a laugh. “Where you goin’?”

“We’re not having sex with my mom in the same house,” Nick explained with a nervous little chuckle, shying away and pushing Dean roughly. “Behave.”

“I can be real quiet,” he said, grinning and scooting closer, hooking his ankles over his friend’s. 

That nervous chuckle returned and Nick flattened his good hand against Dean’s chest, his eyes so dark and deep enough to drown in. He shook his head though, and firmly said, “Not with my mom in the house. She would freak the fuck out if she had any idea.”

“We can, um, go to the garage, back seat of the car?” He scrambled for an excuse not to let go. 

“Dean,” Nick licked his lips and whispered, “I want to hear you beg.”

Desire rolled through Dean, shivering through him from head to toe. “I can beg,” he promised, reaching beneath the blankets to skim his fingers over the waistband of Nick’s sweatpants. 

Their foreheads butted, and Nick did just about everything other than let Dean kiss him, all panting breaths and gentle teeth teasing over already bruised lips.

“You know how many times I’ve thought about this?” Nick panted, “about you? On your knees, begging, saying my name.”

“Fuck, Luci,” Dean chuckled, excitement and embarrassment running though him, chased by the desire to devour his friend. “Anything you want.”

Nick snorted, a sharp startled sound. “You’re such a jackass, you know that?”

He hummed happily, curling his fingers over the top of his friend’s pants. “Yeah, but you like me anyways.”

“I do, and I hate it so much.” Nick’s hands slid over Dean’s, but instead of pushing him away he guided them lower. “But you better be  _ real _ quiet,” he warned before kissing Dean roughly.

Less than five minutes later both of them were laying in a tangle of blankets, trying to catch their breath, grinning. 

Dean could have fallen asleep then. Satisfied and too happy to think any thoughts other than odd little ideas skimming the surface. He’d need to throw their clothes in the washer come morning, and possibly the blanket as well. Everything was pleasantly sticky and very sweaty.

Lazily Dean lifted his cheek from his friend’s chest. “Hey there,” he mouthed the words.

Nick’s teeth dimpled his lower lip as he smiled at Dean.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re pretty cute?”

“I have heard rumors,” Nick murmured, his voice breathy and soft.

“ _ Rumors _ ,” Dean repeated, still grinning. “So, um… always thought it’d be weird to ask, but… is that how gay guys do it?”

His nose wrinkled in an odd smile. “No, Dean. Those were just handjobs.”

Laughing softly, he put his head back down on the other boy’s chest, closing his eyes and listening to the steady pounding of Nick’s heart. 

“You could always look it up on the internet,” Nick suggested with a chuckle.

“Dude, I don’t wanna see pictures of two dudes doing it.”

Nick laughed a little harder.

“Yours is the only dick I’m interested in,” Dean grinned, inwardly acknowledging that was only a half-truth. Over the past couple of weeks, since he’d started really noticing his friend for the first time, Dean had also been finding himself noticing other guys as well. Unfortunately for every other guy in Lawrence, Kansas, they were all measured up against Nick, and as far as Dean was concerned none of those other guys even came close.

Nick looked utterly lost, a happy but confused smile playing over his face.

Under all of those satisfied and sticky feelings, Dean could feel the butterflies returning and he smiled back at his friend. “Hey… promise me something?”

“Anything,” Nick agreed easily.

“Don’t leave without me.” 

Nick shook his head, his smile softening. “I’m not going anywhere, Dean. Except maybe to get a shower.”

“I mean it,” he insisted. “Being serious here for a second. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.”

The other boy’s smile faded altogether. 

“You’ve got to promise me,” Dean frowned too, not willing to let it go.

With a hurt sound, Nick put an arm over his eyes and fell quiet for what felt like too long before finally saying, “You know I can’t stay here and fuck you for asking me to.”

“I’m not asking you to  _ stay _ ,” Dean shook his head, gently pushing Nick’s arm back so he could look at him. Really look at him. The soft redness to Nick’s lips was from Dean, but those dark, angry bruises along his cheek and jaw were much more noticeable right then. “Just promise … promise you won’t leave without me.”

“Because you won’t be able to sleep not knowing where I was?” Nick’s tone was nearly joking as he repeated Dean’s words from earlier in the night.

“Maybe I just sleep better next to you,” Dean smiled, hoping that the sudden anxiety he was feeling wouldn’t be visible to the other boy. 

“You’re such a jerk,” Nick laughed bitterly. He let out a long sigh, his broken arm coming up, his fingers lightly tracing Dean’s lower lip. “I promise I won’t leave without you… but only if you promise me something too?”

“Anything.” Dean arched his back, sitting up enough to draw an X over his heart. 

“Promise that when I leave you’ll come with me.”

Dean wasn’t always the best at keeping his promises―but that one?

He kissed his friend, because that felt like the most romantic and binding way to seal any deal, and then whispered, “I can do that.”

“No, you’ve to say you  _ promise _ .”

Dean grinned, and he promised, and he kissed his friend until they were both too tired to do much else other than finally fall asleep.

Looking back on it as an adult, Dean could see that it had been a stupid promise, a Romeo and Juliet promise, the sort that only teenagers could so confidently make. Back then, Dean was very young and very much falling in love with his best friend, and when he and Nick made those promises, neither of them could have possibly imagined they would have been breaking them only days later.  __

  
  
  


\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Dean let Sammy drag him through the reception hall and deposit him in a chair beside Lisa. It was probably the safest place for him, but that wasn’t something that Dean was interested in right then. He was still scanning the crowd, searching for those broad shoulders and piercing blue eyes.

“Please,” Sam was whispering, keeping a heavy hand on Dean’s arm, “I know you guys hate each other, but  _ please _ don’t. Jess loves her brother and you and him are not going to ruin her wedding by trying to kill each other again.”

All the messy feelings that Dean had were forcibly pushed back down into the deepest parts of him that they’d come crawling out of. More than any of the hurt and resentment that he felt towards Nick, Dean needed to be a good brother. 

And if being a good brother meant not hauling off and punching Nick in his stupid handsome face, then Dean would try.

The moment that Sam turned away Lisa latched on to Dean’s side, her brows drawn together in suspicion. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t  _ do  _ anything,” Dean grumbled, gently trying to shake his friend off.

Lisa knew him too well though, and she didn’t let him go, instead hooking both her arms around his shoulders. “Dean, do we need to go back to the hotel?”

Probably.

Instead he pulled on a smile and leaned into his friend. “Nah, I was promised cake and I ain’t leaving until I get some.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What are you all doing to keep sane these days?  
> I need suggestions of movies or tv shows or something, because I'm climbing the walls out here.

\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Dean didn’t exactly jump at the chance to go out to his parent’s car, but mom had a headache and it was only a quick walk out to the parking lot to get her pills from the glovebox. The cake in his stomach hadn’t exactly settled well with all that alcohol, and maybe a bit of night air would do him good. A little breathing room to settle his thoughts and his stomach. 

He hadn’t come to the reception with his parents, so it was only vague directions that he was trying to follow to find Dad’s black truck amidst the rows and rows of cars out in the parking lot. There wasn’t any real hurry, the longer he was outside the longer he could avoid accidentally running into someone he’d rather not see. 

Which would have been a great and perfect plan, if the world wasn’t so against him. 

Pushing the car alarm button on the keychain, Dean followed the soft honks towards the truck and ground down to a stop the moment he saw that the cab light was on, the passenger side door hanging open, and a very confused Nick poped his head up.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dean demanded. 

“Getting your mom something from the car,” Nick returned the frown, and even with the five or six cars between them, it was still easy to read the defensiveness on the other man’s face. “John gave me his keys.”

It wasn’t that Dean wanted to instantly suspect his parents of conspiring, but he couldn’t exactly ignore the fact that his folks knew pretty much every messy detail of what had happened between the two boys, or the fact that his Dad had been sitting right beside Mom when she’d handed over her keys.

Dean stood there twisting the keyring round and round his finger, trying to fathom this incredible and unexpected betrayal from his parents. There were at least a dozen all terribly stupid things Dean wanted to tell the other man; how he’d honestly spent at least three years assuming his friend was dead, and how the second button on Nick’s jacket was undone.

What ended up coming out was a stilted, “Just hand over Mom’s pills. I’ll bring them to her.”

“She asked me first,” was Nick's incredibly childish response as he tucked something into his pocket and closed the truck door. 

“Yeah, but she obviously asked me second, once she realized what a mistake it was to count on you for  _ anything _ .”

Dean had never met anyone with a scowl quite like Nick’s, and he was actually a little proud of himself for not shrinking away under such a look. 

He held his hand out, expectantly, waiting.

Nick deliberately pushed past him. There was more than enough room between them and the cars to  _ no _ t accidentally touch one another, but the man made the active choice to walk very close and slam his shoulder into Dean’s.

Without a single thought, stumbling and clumsy with all the liquor in him, he reached out and caught himself. Dean got his feet back under him and frowned at how his hand was holding Nick’s forearm. He didn’t let go, and he didn’t say anything, his mind suddenly filled with static as he stood there with a lump in his throat. 

At some point, over the near twenty years that they’d been apart, Nick had grown up, but there were still shadows of the boy he once was in the sharp curve of his mouth and all that heavily guarded uncertainty dancing behind his eyes.

Nick yanked his arm away and started walking. He was just as much of a stubborn, cold, son of a bitch as when they were kids too. 

“Yeah. Go ahead and run the fuck away,  _ again _ ,” Dean raised his voice, distinctly more than was necessary to cover the space between them. “That’s the only thing you were ever any good at.”

Dean was feeling petty and spiteful, and not at all ready for the other man to turn on him. He’d been counting on Nick’s stubbornness to keep him walking away. It didn’t work that way though and Nick’s fist seemed to come out of nowhere, connecting with Dean’s stomach and knocking the breath out of him in a single, painful gasp.

Nick’s voice was clipped but clear, “Go fuck yourself.” 

“Coward, come over here and do it yourself,” Dean barely managed to force the words out through his clenched teeth, struggling to stand upright. 

Between the two of them, Nick had always had better restraint. It wasn’t even a close call. Dean had his temper and the boy next door was like a monument to self-control, cold and closed. 

That was something that Dean had been counting on, but he could feel his fight or flight response kick into action as Nick grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and dragged him close. He pushed his hands against the other man’s chest, trying to keep the smallest illusion of space and safety between them. “Wow, you suck at this,” Dean said around a grin, “you’re supposed to tell me to piss off and just keep walking. Or not even say anything at all. What happened to the silent treatment?”

His reckless rambling seemed to startle Nick, and the man’s eyes widened a touch before narrowing to near slits. “You’re drunk.”

“And  _ you’re _ the asshole who let me think you were dead for almost Five.Fucking.Years,” Dean punctuated those words with his fists, digging his knuckles into the other man’s ribs and pushing against him. It felt like something inside of Dean had broken open and the words were just spilling out of him, “Everyone said you ran away from home, but I knew, I fucking  _ knew _ your step-dad killed you and dumped you out in a field somewhere, because you wouldn’t just leave like that.” He pushed harder, feeling his shoulders shaking with the effort to move the other man. “You promised you wouldn’t leave like that, you son of a bitch.” 

“You’re so full of shit, Dean.” Nick finally said, shoving him back and into someone’s parked car. “I told you where I was going. I wrote to you every single week. You knew I was fine, so just shut up for once in your life.”

Confusion started to smother Dean, mixing with all that old anger, and making a lump in his throat that was nearly impossible to speak around. “You didn’t write me shit. You just took off without a word to anyone like a lying coward.”

The hollows of Nick’s cheek were dark, the muscles in his jaw jumping as he ground his teeth. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

“Or what? You’ll disappear again?” Dean straightened the lapels on his jacket, struggling to get his emotions under control. “ _ Oh no _ , what’ll I do?” He forced out a laugh that tore at his throat. “You already broke my fucking heart once. I don’t give a damn what you do anymore.”

Nick’s eyes flashed, dark and furious for only a split second, to be replaced by a dangerously quiet calm. So fucking calm. He looked down at Dean with an utterly unfeeling expression on his face, all that anger that he was so good at pushed down into whatever dark corner he kept it, until there was nothing left on his face except that terribly quiet calm, and then, he walked away. 

Dean waited right where he was until he couldn’t see the other man’s head over the top of the cars, and then he let out a shaking breath and sat down on the bumper of the nearest car. His knees felt weak, but not in the fun way. More like the strings that had been holding him had suddenly been cut. Dean pressed his shaking hands to his face and felt his insides clench because he could still faintly smell the other man on him. 

Their short yelling match played on repeat in his mind as Dean struggled to decide if he’d said too much, if he’d left himself open and vulnerable because he couldn’t keep his stupid mouth shut. And why would Nick say he wrote to him? Why did he possibly think he’d gain by lying about something like that? 

Nick hadn’t written. 

In the months after Dean had been left alone in Kansas, worried sick, convinced that his friend was dead, he never got one single letter in the mail. Not even a postcard.

He’d gotten nothing. 

Nick had promised not to disappear, only to vanish without a trace.

It had been years worth of mourning his best friend that ended with one single phone call. Dean’s baby brother, just as excited and optimistic as always, calling to talk about his and his girlfriend’s vacation out to the west coast. And what were they doing out there? Not visiting Disneyland or SanFrancisco like normal tourists. They’d gone up to Washington, to some military base, because Jess had found her brother. 

Nick was fine.

He was fucking fine. He’d left Dean, and never even planned on coming back or telling him what happened. 

And Dean had decided right then not to care anymore.

Deciding and doing were different though, and it took him nearly five minutes to steady himself enough to walk back into the reception. He snagged a drink on his way past the bar before making his way to where he’d left his parents. He passed back the keys he hadn’t needed and started wondering where Lisa was―because Dean was more than ready to go back to the hotel.

Mom caught his sleeve though. 

Dean tossed back half of his drink and frowned before offering it out to her, unsure.

Mary laughed softly and shook her head. “My pills, sweetie. Or did you forget?”

“I… um, Nick had them. He said he’d bring them back to you… with Dad’s keys,” Dean didn’t even attempt to mask the soft accusation. 

“So you boys talked then?” Dad asked with absolutely no apology to be found. “Sort some things out finally?”

Dean knew better than to get snippy with his dad, but he was feeling pretty raw right then and he snickered as he said, “No, we didn’t  _ sort some things out _ . He’s still the same stubborn, mean son of a bitch as when we were kids.”

“Well, I just thought with so much in common, that maybe you two might have a lot to talk about,” John said with the crows feet on the corners of his eyes smiling up at Dean. The old man was actually enjoying this. 

The rest of Dean’s drink went down with a hard swallow and he put the empty glass onto the nearest table. He really didn’t want to hear the answer, but he turned to his mom and asked, “Back after you guys sent me off to Bobby’s the second time… do you remember me getting any letters in the mail?”

“Letters?” Her smile faded on the edges and she shook her head. “No. I’m sure you got junk mail and stuff, but I don’t remember any letters.” She turned to her husband, who only shared a shrug. 

“That was a hell of a long time ago,” John pointed out, “but I don’t remember you ever getting anything in the mail except maybe a birthday card or two from your grandparents, and we mailed those up to you.”

Which was precisely what Dean had been expecting to hear, but that didn’t make it an easy confirmation to take.

“Why are you asking about mail, honey?” Mary lightly touched his arm. “Have you had a lot to drink tonight? Do you need to sit down?”

“I’m fine,” and Dean was rapidly losing track of just how many times he’d told that particular lie that evening. “I’m gonna go find Lisa. I think it’s about time we called it a night.”

“Alright,” she agreed hesitantly, before giving her eldest son a tight hug. “If you find Nick along the way, can you send him back here with John’s keys? You know that boy never had a good sense of direction and I’m sure he just got lost.”

“Sure, Mom. If I see him I’ll send him your way,” Dean promised, but still crossed his fingers, hoping that he would actually never see Nick again. He gave his Dad a one-armed hug, promising that he’d be by their place the next night for dinner, and then set off to find Lisa. 

He had no idea how difficult that would be though. Lisa seemed to have evaporated. Dean didn’t worry though, knowing his friend was probably in the bathroom, or had tucked herself away somewhere to have a ‘goodnight’ phone call with her husband like she did every night. Wherever she was, she wasn’t answering his texts right then.

Dean sighed and firmly talked himself out of waiting at the bar. One more drink right then might push him over that dizzy drunk line he’d been teetering on, and there was no way that Lisa would be able to help him back to the hotel if he couldn’t stand on his own two feet. 

He knew he was already fairly drunk from the way his thoughts kept spinning, circling themselves and always coming back to the same place. 

What he needed to do was go find Lisa, but what he did instead was look for his little brother. Their parents might lie, but Sammy never could, not to Dean at least.

“Can I borrow my brother?” He said with a smile to his sweet little sister-in-law.

“You promise you’ll give him back when you’re done?” Jess teased, somehow still looking bright and happy and not at all exhausted despite the fact that she’d been mingling with wedding guests for hours. 

“Well, I’ll definitely bring you back the important parts,” Dean put on a happy mask, even though smiling so much was starting to make his cheeks hurt. 

She wrinkled her nose at him, laughing before shoving Sam his way. “You boys don’t go far. Ok? We need to make our rounds and tell people goodnight soon or I’m just going to fall asleep on my feet.”

Sam gazed at his wife with the same dopey expression he’d been giving her his whole life, reaching out to Jess and holding her hand.

Dean didn’t have time for this though. “Come on, Sammy. You’ve got the rest of forever to make eyes at her. I need you for like two minutes.”

“Sorry. Yeah.” Sam kept that stupid grin of his and let Dean pull him off to one side. “Everything ok?  _ Wow _ , you look hammered,” he let out a low whistle like he’d only just then taken the time to actually look at his big brother.

“Not important,” Dean cut him off. Skipping over any explanation he could have offered, he simply demanded, “Do you remember back when you were in high school and I went to stay at Bobby’s, did I… did I get any weird letters in the mail?”

The look on Sam’s face in that moment was exactly why Dean had hunted his brother down. Because Mom and Dad might lie if they thought they were helping him, they’d certainly rearranged and steered large swaths of his life ‘for his own good’ for years―but Sam couldn't lie to Dean if his life depended on it. 

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try though. Sam hid his incredibly guilty expression behind an innocent smile. “Letters? No, um, I don’t remember any letters from Nick.”

It wasn’t the answer that Dean had hoped for and he let out an irritated sigh. “I don’t know if I should be mad at you or what. You are literally the worst liar in the world and I’m disappointed to be related to you.”

“I  _ can  _ lie,” Sam bristled, suddenly getting defensive. “You just caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready. Ask me again.”

“I’m not asking you again, Sammy. Christ.” Dean nearly choked on his laughter, running a hand over his face. He cleared his throat and started feeling like possibly he wasn’t the only one who’d had too much to drink. “Just tell me about the damn letters.”

“What letters?”

“Look, I’m still your big brother and I will not hesitate to beat your ass, in front of friends and family, on your wedding day.” It was mostly joking, but underneath his grin, he was panicking. 

There shouldn’t have been any letters.

“I mean,” Sam couldn’t quite meet his eye, “there were a couple right after Nick ran away from home. But just a couple.”

“Sammy, don’t do this to me.” Dean could feel the moment that his smile fell, when he didn’t have enough energy to keep pretending that they were laughing and joking about this and that these missing letters were not some kind of absolute betrayal.

“They were just letters, Dean. It’s not like he called you. I would have given you the phone if he called you.”

“But you wouldn’t give me his letters because…” he trailed off, lifting his eyebrows and waiting for a really good explanation. 

“Jess said her mom caught you two guys fighting,” Sam said slowly, struggling to put words to whatever sound logic his young teenage mind had come up with so many years ago. “And I remember... Mom and Mrs. Williams yelling at each other and Dad taking you on this long drive, you were gone like a whole day and you came back so mad. No one would tell me what happened. You and Nick, you two were always getting into fights. Really bad fights. I figured they were bad letters, you know? That he was still mad at you. I didn’t want you two fighting anymore. Mrs. Williams wouldn’t let me come over anymore. I wasn’t allowed to talk to Jess. It was this huge mess just because you two couldn’t stop fighting. I thought I was helping.” 

It was very fortunate that they were in a crowded space, because it kept Dean from doing something violent to his stupid and very ‘helpful’ baby brother who obviously had no idea what had really happened between Dean and Nick.

Clenching and unclenching his fists, Dean slowly counted backwards from ten, but only got so far as six, before demanding, “What did the letters say?”

“I don’t know.” Sam looked surprised. “I didn’t read them, Dean. They weren't mine.”

“Everyone thought Nick had either run away from home or killed himself, and you saw letters from him in the mail and you just threw them away?” He was talking through his teeth, struggling to keep his voice down as a very old anger sparked and smoldered inside of him. 

“I put them somewhere safe,” Sam said softly.

Dean wasn’t nearly sober enough for this. His head was starting to hurt. “You still have them?”

“Probably?” Sam looked away, eyes searching the room, but not really focused on anything. “I don’t know. I’d forgotten they even existed until you brought them up. It was like fifteen or twenty years ago, Dean.”

“I need those letters, Sammy.”

“Do you?” The pained look on the kid showed he meant well, but he really was going the right way to get smacked upside the head. “I mean, it was a lifetime ago. You don’t need to relive those old feelings. You guys are both adults now, you don’t have to keep fighting about whatever you two were always fighting about. Old letters aren’t going to help.”

“Sam,” Dean swallowed down the angry words he could feel rising, at least he tried. “Sammy, I know you were a kid when this all happened, but you’re fucking oblivious. Mrs. Williams didn’t catch me and Nick  _ fighting _ , she caught us having sex.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty fucking sure.”

Sam didn’t look offended or disgusted, just openly confused, his eyebrow high and his mouth hanging open for a moment before he softly pointed out, “But you’re straight…” 

“Am not, and neither is he.” These were fairly simple and obvious facts and Dean stated them as they were. Beautiful, inarguable truths. “We were dating. I was in love with him. He was my best friend. Sammy, where the hell are my letters?” 

Sam was a good guy, and a good brother, even if he sometimes did stupid things in the name of ‘helping’. At least his heart was in the right place.

“You remember that Hardy Boys book you got for me? The one you cut out the insides so I could hide things in it?”

Dean nodded slowly. He knew exactly what his brother was talking about. 

“So they’re probably still on my old bookcase at Mom and Dad’s, or maybe in a box out in the garage.” Sam shrugged awkwardly before the hint of a smile crept in. “You two were really  _ dating _ ?”

“You don’t get to smile about it.”

“But… I mean… it’s kind of cute.”

“Shut up,” Dean ran his hands through his hair, not at all in the mood for this. He was mentally already in his car, driving to his parent’s house to look for that book. 

“I always thought you two hated each other.”

“Yeah, well we did for a long time.”

“And then you were dating?”

“Something like that,” Dean didn’t want to talk. Not to his brother. His thoughts were a puzzle dumped out on the floor, a jumble of colors and chaos and he had no idea what to do with this mess he was left with. “Go. Get back to Jess.”

Sam wasn’t that easy to shake off. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” he confessed, trying to smile even though it didn’t feel right. 

“You’re too drunk to drive, just in case you were thinking of going home and looking for the letters.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “At least sit down somewhere and try to sober up a bit before doing something stupid. Please.”

There must have been a particularly defiant look on Dean’s face, because his brother only sighed and took him by the shoulders and led him across the room and to the back door. 

“I don’t want to go outside,” Dean argued, dragging his feet.

“Yes you do,” Sam insisted. “And I’ve already taken your keys from your pocket. I’ll leave them with Uncle Bobby because he doesn’t put up with your shit.”

Dean tried to argue, but they were standing on grass. He had no idea when or why his brother had learned to move him around so easily. “Hey, no. Lisa can drive. I’m fine,” 

“Neat,” Sam didn’t look impressed. “I’ll let her know you’re out here talking to Nick and you need some time.”

“What?”

Sam used Dean’s shoulders as leverage to turn him around, pointing him towards the fountain before gesturing to the fair-haired man sitting out there all by himself. Sam spoke softly, but encouragingly. “Jess and I are going back to the hotel. So you and Nick can hit each other… or kiss, or whatever you two have been avoiding all night. Go for it. Text me tomorrow and let me know how it went.” 

“I’m  _ not  _ going out there and talking to him.” Dean’s heart was suddenly racing and he didn’t know why. It had to be the alcohol. He wasn’t afraid of Nick. Not even a little.

“You can talk to him or I can,” Sam’s threats were simple and horrifying. “And you really don’t want my help, Dean. I want to get out of here and go cuddle with my wife, and anything I’m going to say to Nick for you is going to be fast and bad and you can easily do that on your own.”

“You don’t get it,” Dean shook his head. “Even if he wrote me letters… he still left. He still fucking left me. Even if I thought he was dead, he knew I wasn’t. He let me go. He grew up and he moved on and that kid I was in love with is long gone. I can’t just go  _ talk _ to him.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Ok. Dean. Wow. Deep breath. You are a psychologist,” he reminded, “your job is literally talking to people. Go talk to him. You’ve got this. Good luck.”

Dean felt his brother leave his side, but he didn’t see it, he was too focused on watching Nick’s head bowed over the soft glow of his phone, one ankle crossed over a knee, unmoving other than the bouncing of his foot. 

The party inside was winding down. At some point, it had started to get late. When Dean had come outside earlier, he and Nick were the only ones. Now there were little clusters of people spread out, drinking and talking, a whole lot of happy people enjoying the warm night air. 

It made for a lot of witnesses and as Dean walked carefully over the grass he couldn’t decide if having chaperones was a good or a bad thing. He didn’t know what to say. Standing there like an idiot, waiting to be noticed, felt like a valid option, but Dean wasn’t a patient person. 

He jammed his hands into his pockets and kicked one foot out, knocking the toe of his shoe against Nick’s. “Hey.”

Nick didn’t move other than scrolling on his phone screen with one thumb. 

“Hey,” Dean repeated a little louder, kicking the other man’s shoe again. 

“If you scuff my shoes I will throw you in this fountain,” Nick’s voice was quiet and surprisingly sharp.

“Then fucking look at me when I’m trying to talk to you.”

“No,” was the man’s simple answer, and he continued to scroll over his phone, even though there was no way he was actually taking in any of the words flying past on the little screen.

Bearing his teeth in a petty little grin, Dean kicked Nick’s shoe again, really making sure to get as much shoe on shoe contact as possible. 

The phone scrolling finally stopped, and Nick looked up with murder in his eyes. “Have you always been this goddamn annoying?”

“Probably,” Dean shrugged, not really able to argue with that one. “Sam said I have to talk to you.”

“Good for Sam.”

“And Mom told me to tell you to give her back the keys.” Dean honestly wasn't sure what he wanted to say. None of the things coming out of his mouth were right though. 

“Already did.” Nick cocked his head to one side, chewing on his lip for a moment before asking, “Are we done?”

“You wrote to me after you left.”

“I’m not doing this, Dean,” he said, his voice low like a warning. 

“I didn’t know you wrote to me,” Dean tried to explain, not at all certain these were the right words either. “Sammy... he thought he was helping. He never told me about the letters, he just hid them somewhere. I didn’t know.”

For whatever it was worth, that haunting calm didn’t immediately come flooding back. Nick stayed angry, little red spots forming on his cheeks and when he spoke his words were so salty it was a wonder he could even get them out. “Why didn’t you start with that. Well this just changes  _ everything _ . Now we can share our feelings and talk about old times. Come sit down,” and he uncrossed his leg, lightly patting his lap. 

Dean was enough of an ass that he very nearly took that sarcastic offer, just because he’d love to see Nick really lose his cool. “Listen you son of a bitch. You don’t get to be mad at me because you ran away from home. You knew where I was. You could have called. You could have come back.”

“ _ Could I _ , Dean?” He asked softly. “Could I really? Because I thought my only options were take the bus money my mom gave me, or stay and let my step-dad kill me for being gay, because you fucking know he would have. But oh, I could have just  _ come home _ . Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You could have waited for me.” Dean pointed out, not ready to start feeling guilty about this. “You could have waited until I came home and we could have left together.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

“Did you even try?” 

Much like the things that he’d started with, Dean could tell that that was the wrong thing to say. The fact that the other man was suddenly standing and trying to throw Dean into the fountain was a very clear indicator that his question had not been a good one. 

Dean struggled to keep his legs under himself, clinging to Nick while at the same time trying to put distance between himself and the fountain. All he managed to do though was to pull Nick in the water with him. After a lot of sputtering and swearing, Dean pulled himself up to the ornate fountain edge, coughing water and glaring at the other man who was fishing his phone out of the water. 

The moment that Nick held his phone up, dripping wet and screen dark, Dean yanked it out of the man’s hands and threw it to the far end of the fountain. 

“Alright,” Nick said a little too loudly, all that nice restraint of his finally stripped away. “I was going to let you leave after kicking your ass, but now I actually have to drown you.” 

“Well, jokes on you, because I know how to swim,” he laughed a little too happily, “so good luck with that homicide,  _ Luci _ .”

Nick hit him. 

Dean deserved it.

Dean hit him back. 

Nick maybe didn’t deserve it. 

_ Maybe _ .

It could really go either way. 

They didn’t have a chance to sort each other out before they were being hauled apart. Dean was blinking water from his eyes and startled to see his Dad and his brother. 

“Oh my god, Dean,” Sam was saying, wedging both of Dean’s arms behind his back. “I said kiss him, not kill him.”

“He started it,” Dean said before coughing up more chlorine flavored water. 

Nick lunged at him, arguing and trying to hit him right up until John got between them. Then all Dean could see was his own father’s very broad shoulders, until Sam pulled him a good yard or two away and shook him. 

“What?” Dean demanded, slapping at his brother’s hands. 

“Really?” Sam shook him again. “ _ Really _ ?”

“He started it.” Dean was determined to stick to his story.

“I saw the whole thing.”

“You were supposed to leave.”

“Yeah, but Jess wanted to see you and Nick kiss.” He whispered. “And you two couldn’t keep from yelling at each other for two minutes.”

“Because he’s a jerk and wouldn’t let me apologize to him.”

The incredibly doubtful look his baby brother gave him said that Sam wasn’t buying it. And no, Dean hadn’t really gotten to the ‘ _ I’m sorry _ ’ part of the conversation, but he’d been making his way around to it. Apologize shouldn’t be rushed.

Sam was the smart one. He didn’t pick a side. He just handed Dean off to Lisa, saying, “I’m really sorry, but he’s your problem now.”

“He has been for years,” Lisa said with a sigh, looking at Dean and his dripping wet clothes like she had no idea what to do with him. “Why did I think I could leave you alone?”

“You’re hopelessly optimistic,” Dean said and shook water from his hair. 

He let his friend lead him away, only glancing back over his shoulder half a dozen times, not caring what anyone else might think. He needed to see that Nick was alright, the other man looking like a drowned rat where he sat on the edge of the fountain being lectured by Jess.

Dean knew he got off easy. 

Lisa was too disappointed in him to say anything until they got back to the hotel, and even then she only went as far as saying that Dean needed to sleep it off, and they could talk in the morning. 

They’d been friends for so long, that Dean really should have known to take her advice. Lisa was smart, and patient, and had been putting up with Dean’s nonsense for years. Sleeping was really the best option. 

But instead, he took a cold shower, a long enough shower that he started to feel himself sobering up. On a normal night that might have been a good thing. However, the last thing that Dean wanted right then was a clear head. 

He got dressed, grateful for the feeling of jeans and a t-shirt after a whole day stuffed into a tuxedo. Not even wasting the time to lace up his boots, Dean snuck out past his sleeping friend and down to the hotel bar. 

A scotch on the rocks was a perfect substitution for thinking.

Dean claimed a booth in the corner, stretching his legs out beneath the table and relaxing for what felt like the first time since stepping off the plane days before. 

He thought he had his night all figured out. He’d sit and brood quietly, and beat himself black and blue trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong between him and his friend back when they were kids, and each time he felt a little too overwhelmed by all the things that he and Nick had never said, Dean would take a sip of his scotch. 

Only problem with the plan was that Dean found the bottom of his glass far too quickly. 

Working up the energy to walk back to the bar was exhausting on its own. Dean pressed his thumbs to his eyes and tried to convince himself that the dead inside feeling settling into his bones was a sign that he needed to seriously consider going to bed.

Something was set noisily on the table beside his elbows, and he lowered his hands enough to see a fresh scotch sitting there like a gift. 

A renewed feeling of hope and wellbeing blossomed inside of Dean and he looked up with a grin that never stood a chance. 

Instead of a caring bartender, it was Nick who stood there looking down at him. 

He looked different out of his uniform. Softer somehow. Less like a man who might have spent years of military training learning how to beat someone up.

Every single thing that Dean had been thinking right up until that moment was simply gone. He didn’t have two ideas left to rub together as the other man carefully sat down across from him. 

All Dean managed to do was stare blankly. 

The offering of scotch was nudged closer.

Hesitantly, Dean took the drink, slowly rolling it between his hands. “If you’re still planning to drown me, but with scotch this time? I’m not going to complain,” he said working his way up to a smile. 

And to Dean’s surprise, Nick smiled back.

For a fraction of a second Dean was a teenager again, his stomach doing somersaults because a cute boy was smiling at him. Slapping that unexpected feeling away, Dean raised his glass to his lips and took a long drink. Clearing his throat he asked, “Should I ask why you’re here?”

Nick had a drink of his own, though his looked like coffee, and Dean didn’t even know that was an option. The other man looked into his mug, turning it in slow circles, making two full rotations before speaking. “Because I came back to my hotel and heard the girls at the front desk whispering about how I was the second guy tonight to come in soaking wet. Figured chances were pretty good that that other guy was you.” Nick glanced up from his mug with a hint of his earlier smile still dancing in the corners of his eyes. “And we would be unlucky enough to have picked the same hotel to stay at.” 

“We always did have pretty bad luck,” Dean agreed softly.

“Not  _ always _ … there were a couple good times,” Nick said just as softly. He didn’t drink his coffee, he just kept spinning the mug, dragging it in circles by the handle.

“Just a couple?” Dean asked, very uncertain about this oddly non-aggressive conversation they were having. 

“Maybe two good times,” Nick offered with the smallest chuckle.

Dean ran a hand over his face. He didn’t want to laugh too, he didn’t want to acknowledge what the other man’s laugh did to him. 

“Is your girlfriend going to be joining you?”

Dean looked up. “Girlfriend? You mean Lisa?” He shook his head, smiling. “Nah, man. She is a girl, and she is my friend, but it’s not like that. She just came along to the wedding as my chaperone.”

“Chaperone?” Nick scoffed. “And how well did that work out?”

“I mean, I did get thrown in a fountain, but I’ve had worse nights.” 

They shared one more hesitant smile before an awkward silence settled between them. 

Dean shifted his legs, accidentally kicking Nick’s foot before muttering an apology. 

“This is super uncomfortable, wow,” Nick grinned for a breath before looking back into the depth of his coffee.

“I was never any good at small talk,” Dean pointed out. He wasn’t sure if he could do this, this sitting here trying to talk like old friends while they skirted around every single thing that they actually needed to say. “I’m going to my folk’s tomorrow, Sammy told me where he stashed your letters.”

Nick visibly squirmed in his seat. “You’re not going to read them, are you?”

That caught Dean off guard, and he offered an uncertain, “Yeah?”

“Please don’t,” the other man said quickly. “Just throw them out.”

It was a reasonable request. If young Dean had written a bunch of letters back when his friend had first disappeared there would be nothing in those pages other than heartache and bad spelling. He wouldn’t want anyone reading his cringy teenage letters either. 

“Alright,” Dean nodded, agreeing even though he had every intention of opening those letters as soon as he found them. Nick was allowed to feel as embarrassed as he wanted about everything that he’d put down in those letters―but Dean needed to see them. 

He’d lived for years thinking his best friend had died, only to discover that the other boy had simply abandoned him and never looked back. 

Dean needed some kind of closure. 

Even if that closure came in the form of angst-filled letters scrawled by a teenager who had probably felt just as lost and alone as Dean had back then. 

“Sorry I wasn’t there when you left,” he said in as clear a voice as he could manage. “I should have been there when you needed me.”

Nick drew a painful breath and looked down at his hands for a very long time. 

Dean reached across the table and hijacked the other man’s coffee, taking a long drink and wondering how he ever could have possibly been friends with a man who put that much sugar and creamer in his coffee. 

He pushed the mug back over. “Did you order it like this? Hot milk with a splash of coffee? Because that’s real rough, man.”

“You don’t like it, you can go get your own,” Nick pointed out, pulling his drink closer with a defensive frown. 

Dean couldn’t quite hide his smile, laughing and hating the fact that the other man apparently hadn’t ever grown out of that angry little pout that he did so well. No grown man should be allowed to reach those levels of cute. It wasn’t right. 

He rubbed his eyes, still chuckling, that happy feeling simmering down and settling as he noticed that the other man was watching him with a very odd expression. 

“Sorry for throwing you in the fountain,” Nick said, only meeting Dean’s eye for a second before looking elsewhere. 

“Eh,” he shrugged, “like I said, I’ve had worse nights.”

Nick shook his head, one corner of his mouth hooking up. 

“So, um,” Dean faltered, not sure what to say. “You joined the navy and had kids. Anything else exciting happen in the last twenty years?”

“Seventeen years,” Nick corrected, “and it’s the Airforce, and I don’t have kids either. So you’re O for three.”

Dean flapped a hand, dismissive. “No, you’ve got daughters or something, I heard you on the phone with some guy.” He left out the fact that he’d also heard Nick saying ‘ _ I love you _ ’ to the man on the phone. As much as that last part dug under Dean’s skin for reasons he didn’t want to explore, that ‘love’ part wasn’t any of his business.

“I’ve got two dogs, and if some jackass,” Nick kicked Dean’s shin under the table, “hadn’t pulled me into a fountain and ruined my phone I could show you a picture of them.” 

Dean tried to imagine the other man with dogs, but found himself very distracted by the way that one of Nick’s shoes had come to rest between his own. It could be an accident. It was probably an accident. So Dean struggled with the moony-eyed teenager still lurking somewhere deep inside, and he put on a smile and joked like he would have if it was anyone else sitting across from him. “If you honestly thought I was going in that fountain without a fight then you’ve completely forgotten who I am.” 

“Oh, I remember exactly who you are. You’re Dean-fucking-Winchester, trouble maker extraordinaire. I just thought I was fast enough to get you in there before you had a chance to retaliate.”

“ _ Moi _ ? A trouble maker?” Dean feigned innocence, putting a hand to his heart. “No. No, I was a good kid, I just hung around with delinquents like you.”

Nick laughed. He had a good laugh.

It caught Dean off guard and for a heartbeat he couldn’t breathe. 

Shaking his head, Nick leaned back in the booth, the other man’s body visibly relaxing for the first time that Dean had seen. “So, what about you? What have you been doing? I always wanted to ask your mom or Sam or Jess about you, but I couldn’t get up the nerve.”

Dean ignored the prickle of irritation at the implication that his mother and brother apparently had grown closer to Nick over the years. Dean wouldn’t be jealous. Nick didn’t have a proper family unit of his own, so it was actually nice to know that he’d been able to lean on a couple of Winchesters when he needed them. 

“College?” Dean said with a shrug. “A whole lot of college.”

“No kids or pets?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got some really healthy houseplants, and there's a neighborhood cat that I leave food out for sometimes.”

Nick’s smile was soft as he sat there looking at Dean’s face for a little too long. 

The scrutiny made Dean fidget and he fished for an excuse. He told the other man about work and Nick seemed honestly surprised that Dean had gone into psychology. It gave them something to talk about that felt like a real conversation instead of the two of them struggling to make small talk. 

It was only when the bartender swung by their table and told them they were closing for the night, did Dean realise how long they’d been sitting there. It was three in the morning. 

They walked each other to the elevator as they fell back into that odd silence. It was time to say goodnight, but it didn’t have to be ‘goodbye’ and Dean tried to work up the courage to ask Nick over to his parent’s place tomorrow. 

But Nick got there first. 

“You want to come back to my room?” The offer the man put out was a hell of a lot more direct than what Dean had been thinking about. Nick seemed to be startled by his own words and quickly tried to clarify, “If you wanted to keep talking I mean. Just talking.”

The offer, even if accidentally made, was out there though. 

Dean looked at his feet, his still untied laces, staring at his shoes until he was sure that he had his face under control. He cleared his throat and offered his best attempt at a smile. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. What would your boyfriend think?”

“Boyfriend?” Nick chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t have anyone worrying about me staying up late talking to an old friend.”

Pushing the elevator button a couple times, Dean couldn’t think of a nicer way to say it, and just pointed out, “The guy you were talking to on the phone tonight. He’s watching your dogs.”

“Chuck?” Nick’s eyebrows shot up.

“Not that I was eavesdropping or anything, but you know… ending a call with ‘I love you’ just kind of feels like...  _ something _ . I don’t want to make trouble for you, man.”

The elevator doors opened before Nick got over his small bout of laughter. “Wow. You’ve changed.”

Dean shrugged, stepping into the elevator and putting his hand against the door to hold it until the other man joined him.

Nick took his place beside Dean, pushing the button for his floor, before chuckling again, and finally explaining himself. “Chuck’s my dad. My real dad. I leave my girls with him when I’ve got to be away from home for a while.”

That made Dean grin. Not because the other man was single, but because his childhood friend seemed to have a healthy relationship with his own father, and that wasn’t something that Dean ever thought Nick would have. 

“Yeah,” Dean said, folding his arms over his stomach to keep all those odd feelings he had in place. “I can come up for a bit. Apparently we’ve still got a lot to catch up on.”

Nick’s room looked a lot like Dean’s, except for it only had one bed. It made for some very limited seating options, but Dean was too old to acknowledge the possible awkwardness, and simply sat on the foot of the bed.

“So,” he couldn’t remember where their conversation had left off, so Dean started fresh, “you found your dad?”

“I did,” Nick grinned, sitting on the opposite side of the bed and kicking off his shoes. “When my mom kicked me out that’s where I went. Chuck’s… he’s a good guy.” It was a simple answer, but the warmth in Nick’s voice added volumes. “I’m sure I told you about him in those letters that, again, you really don’t need to read.”

“I already said I wouldn’t.”

Nick narrowed his eyes suspiciously like he could see right through Dean’s lie

“So!” Dean hurried to change the subject, not liking the sudden seriousness. “You’re apparently single… you ever settle down? Or does that not work with the whole Airforce thing?” 

“There’s been a few guys off and on, but nothing super serious. Lived with someone for a bit right after high school, but…” he shrugged and leaned back against the headboard. 

“You ever get up the nerve to go back home and find that old crush of yours?”

Nick opened his mouth to say something, but seemed to give up before he could find the words. He started laughing, laughing hard enough that he had to wipe his eyes.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Dean chuckled, caught up in the sound of the other man’s joy.

“Oh my god,” Nick weezed, struggling to calm down enough to talk. “You dense son of a bitch. Was that a real question? An honest to god real-life question?”

If Dean could have taken it back he would have. He never liked being the butt of someone’s joke. “Ok, but it’s a valid question. You were so hung up on that guy, I’m not sure how I ever talked out into going out with me at all.”

“Dean!” Nick forced through his hiccuping laughter. “For fuck’s sake. He was  _ you _ . You were the guy. You’re the jerk I was in love with, you absolute moron.”

There wasn’t really anything Dean could say in answer to that kind of exclamation. Hopefulness and utter confusion flooded his insides. Very near panic he tried to buy himself some time, pointing out, “Ok, but the name-calling isn’t necessary.”

“Young me was such an idiot,” Nick said with a rumbling chuckle, self-deprecating and happy. “Obviously I fell in love with your looks and not your brains, because… wow. Just wow. You really didn’t know?”

“How the hell would I know you liked me?”

A question that brought Nick right back to wiping tears from his eyes. “You sweet, gorgeous idiot,” he barely managed to squeak out, “I told you a million times. I swear I did, and then―and then I’d just  _ stare  _ at you as hard as I could thinking ‘ _ this time he’ll figure it out’.  _ You fucking walnut.” He let out a happy sigh, still grinning as he mumbled seemingly to himself, “Fuck me, but I really knew how to pick ‘em.” 

“Alright, but in my defense, you were way out of my league,” and Dean was fine admitting that. “So you’ll just have to forgive the fact that apparently I spent  _ way  _ too much time being jealous of myself.”

Nick’s smile went sideways and he looked at his lap for a second before asking, “You were jealous?”

“Of course I was.” It was Dean’s turn to laugh. “You were beautiful, and weird, and strong, and completely fucking insane, and I had the worst crush on you. And you? You had the hots for someone else.”

Nick smiled and shook his head, amusement making his eyes bright. “Hate to argue, but I’ve seen pictures of me when I was a teen. I was  _ not _ beautiful.”

“First off, you  _ love  _ to argue. Second, I refuse to change my opinion, because you were  _ beautiful _ ,” Dean said as firmly as he could, refusing to change his mind. “When we were kids you absolutely wrecked me, Nick.” 

“That’s what I always hated most about you,” Nick chuckled, “You’re too damn charming for your own good."

Who was Dean to argue with such a true statement? He grinned back at his old friend and tried to explain himself, “A few months after you disappeared I got sent back up to South Dakota to live with my uncle; and let me just say that there were no guys up there like you, and as a freshly budding bisexual I resented your beauti-ousness on a regular basis.”

“ _ Beauti-ousness _ ?” 

“Beauti-ousness,” Dean confirmed. “Resented the hell out of it.”

Nick gave him a long, exasperated look before finally saying, “You know… I hate to admit, but I think I actually might have missed you.”

It wasn’t like the other man’s words were particularly deep or sentimental, but for some reason hearing that little confession brought a lump to Dean’s throat. 

He coughed and struggled for a moment before he was able to admit, “Missed you too, you son of a bitch.”

Nick chuckled.

“I did hate you for a long time though,” Dean admitted softly, trying to be honest and open for a moment because he didn’t think he’d have another chance. “Probably right up until nine o’clock tonight when Sam told me that you’d sent me letters.”

That seemed to sober up the other man. Nick’s smile fell and he looked down at his hands, picking at his thumb nail before quietly admitting, “If it makes you feel any better, I really fucking hated you too. First you wouldn’t leave Lawrence with me even though you promised, and then you never answered any of my letters. I just figured after my mom caught us…” he let out a slow, shaking breath.

Dean waited, watching the other man’s knuckles turn white as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

It took a long and painful moment before Nick was able to finish his thought, and it wasn’t a good one. “I figured that you realized you were straight and were just happy to see me gone.” 

Dean was a psychiatrist who worked with troubled kids and teenagers, and the other man’s words were not easy ones to swallow, no matter how many times he’d had to hear them. 

“No,” Dean said hoarsely. “No one was happy you were gone, man. I couldn’t fucking sleep for weeks. I was sure any day my dad was going to come home and tell me that some patrol car found your body out in a field or something.” 

Nick didn’t seem to have a response for that other than tucking his legs up onto the bed and somehow managing to make himself look small in the same way he used to do when they were kids. It didn't last, thankfully. With a sharp breath, Nick uncurled and squared his shoulders. 

"Nope," he said a little too hard, waving both hands like he was trying to bat the bad feelings away. "Don't want to have this talk right now. I hate this talk."

This was something Dean actually knew how to deal with. Every single patient he'd ever had eventually got to the point that they needed to back off a painful topic―only Dean had never been a key part of someone's painful past before. Even though it was harder than normal, he smiled gently and got ready to say something kind and affirming. 

Nick got there first. 

"Do you want to have sex?" The blonde asked with a completely serious expression on his face. 

Dean’s teeth audibly clicked together as he closed his mouth. A nearly nervous chuckle snuck out and he said, "Well  _ that's _ a super healthy coping mechanism."

"OK. New rule, if you use therapist talk on me I get to punch you in the kidney."

"I mean, that sounds like a totally reasonable response," Dean said rolling his eyes.

"And that sounds like kidney-punching talk to me."

"You'd have to catch me first, and you're not as fast as you used to be." Dean was very aware that those were fighting words, but they also made the other man grin viciously, and that was the point. Distractions were good when conversations got too hard, and Dean was an expert at distractions. 

"You wanna go, Winchester? Because I'm happy to kick your ass just like I used to." Nick leaned towards Dean, rocking forward to his knees. "A nice little walk down the memory lane of ass-kicking. Reliving the good old days…"

That nervous chuckle of Dean’s came right back, and he tried his best to swallow it down. “That’s awful big talk for a man wearing rainbow socks.”

“Just because my feet are rainbowy doesn’t mean they can’t kick your ass.”

“I think you’re just looking for an excuse to get your hands on me again.”

Nick licked his lips. “Do I need an excuse?”

It was a simple shift in the mood of the room, but a very noticeable one, and Dean found himself incredibly aware of the bed they were sitting on. 

“I, um,” Dean fought back a grin, trying to appeal to the responsible (though currently very quiet) part of himself that knew they were talking about taking a path that they’d have a hell of a time coming back from. “I think that between the two of us you always had better self-control and I’m gonna have to let you make that call.”

“You haven't changed much,” Nick mercifully leaned back, his knees bent and the empty space between his legs looking oddly welcoming. “Still dodgy as hell when you get uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Dean argued. He was literally trying to be strong and make a safe choice. His heart was already full to bursting with old feelings that he thought he’d cut out of himself a long time ago. Adding sex to the mix at that moment could only complicate things―not that it wasn’t tempting as hell. 

“If you’re not uncomfortable then get over here,” Nick demanded, patting the spot beside him. “Promise I won’t bite.”

“You know, I’m not really sure I believe you,” he chuckled softly, but slid himself up to the head of the bed. 

“Hey,” Nick whispered with a little half-smile.

“Hey,” Dean whispered back, a tickle starting low in his stomach. “For the record, I think this is a bad idea, but I’m also not saying no. I… I just want to put it out there.”

“You think it’s a bad idea to sit next to me?” The other man asked with such perfect innocence in his voice. 

“You’re a terrible actor.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nick stretched his long legs out, mirroring how Dean was sitting.

“Alright, weirdo,” Dean chuckled.

“You know, no one else in my entire life has ever made me half as nervous as you do.”

It was a mutual feeling, but Dean thought that it was a little too obvious to bear repeating. Instead, he grinned, lightly elbowing the other man. “Remind me to pat myself on the back for that later.” 

From the corner of his eye, Dean watched the man who used to be his friend slowly smile and shake his head. 

“Hey,” Nick said like a question.

“Yeah, man?” 

“I’ve been up since dawn and I’m really fucking tired.”

“Same,” Dean agreed, because he couldn’t hear those words without needing to stifle a yawn. “You saying it’s time for me to take off?”

“No. No,” Nick shook his head, folding his hands over his stomach before unfolding them again to smooth out wrinkles in his t-shirt. “Hey…”

Dean snorted, wondering how long the other man planned to keep this up. “ _ Yeah _ ?”

“I’m bored,” Nick mumbled under his breath. 

Startled, Dean half turned to look at Nick, for a moment too surprised to say anything. 

“Just putting that out there,” Nick continued to pick at his shirt, “you know, in case you were maybe a little bored too.”

“Maybe… maybe the  _ tiniest  _ bit bored,” Dean said slowly, holding up two fingers like he was trying to measure something small between them. 

“You good if I turn off the light, and just whatever happens happens?”

Dean snorted, looking back at the other man. “Why you wanna turn off the light?”

“Because whatever happens, I’m gonna be too tired to get up and turn off the light afterwards.”

The impulsiveness inside of Dean demanded that he offer to be the one to get up and get the light later, because he really preferred to see his partner when ‘ _ whatever happens happens _ ’, but his phone started to ring. 

Something he would usually completely ignore in a situation like this, except that it was the ringtone he had set for Lisa.

Not even thinking about it, he reached over and lightly stroked the other man’s arm as if to say ‘I’m still here, just give me a second’, while he pulled his phone from a pocket. 

“Hey, Lis,” he said with a smile, knowing he was in at least a little bit of trouble because he should have left a note for her before leaving in the middle of the night. 

“Everything ok?” She asked with a sleep heavy voice tinged with worry.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” Dean promised, cracking a grin because that was the first time all night that those words weren’t a lie. “I just went down to the hotel bar for a bit.”

“This late?”

“Yeah, um, ran into a guy and went back to his room.”

The silence on the other end of line had to go along with one of Lisa’s amused but annoyed expressions. “Alright. Have fun. Just remember checkout is tomorrow at noon.”

Dean promised he would be back in time, telling his friend goodnight and tossing his phone aside. Still grinning he turned to Nick, then chuckled softly. 

The other man’s head had fallen to one side, his eyes closed and his breaths soft and even. 

If it wasn’t slowly coming up on four in the morning, then Dean might have been slightly offended. As it was he found himself gazing fondly at a man he hardly knew, his chest tight. 

As carefully as possible, Dean slid off the bed. Before he could move a single step away a hand wrapped around his wrist, dragging at him like an anchor. He looked back at the still mostly asleep man on the bed. 

“Stay,” Nick said softly. Not a request.

“I’m just getting the light. I wasn’t leaving.” Dean tried and failed to keep himself from smiling like an idiot as he gently pried Nick’s fingers from his arm. He got the light, plunging the room into darkness, before slipping out of his boots and shuffling clumsily back to the bed.

Warm arms hooked around Dean’s waist and his breath caught in his throat as he was pulled down onto the mattress. His heart started to race as he was pushed onto his back, and then a chuckle rumbled in his chest when Nick came to rest his head on Dean’s shoulder, an arm draping around his waist. 

It was more touching than they’d done all night, but Dean didn’t mind being a pillow for the other man. 

“Good night,” he whispered into the dark, grinning when his only answer was his old friend’s measured, sleeping breaths. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you guys for all the love on this story. If you've been with me for a while then you know that Ducifer was a very accidental ship for me, one that I was trying for a very long time to avoid but have since embraced. Thanks for letting me entertain you with a second fic for these two goofballs. Re-reading and editing these chapters before I post them has only made me feel a need to eventually make a third fic... so we'll see how long I can avoid that one XD

\----  **Summer, 2020** \---

Dean was only distantly aware of his phone ringing, hardly waking up enough for any of his surroundings to even fully register in his mind. Hearing a man’s voice suddenly talking right beside Dean, however, was enough to startle him into wide-eyed blinking around the hotel room as he struggled to get his bearings. 

“No,” Nick was saying with a yawn. “He’s still sleeping… yeah, I’ll tell him… ok. Here,” Nick shifted, scooting close enough that most of his body was in contact with Dean’s side, and he held the phone to Dean’s ear, softly saying, “it’s your lady friend.”

“Hello, my  _ lady friend _ ,” Dean said, smiling at Nick and just how groggy and confused the other man looked right then. 

“First off,” Lisa started in a sharp tone, “he sounds super cute. Second, we’re supposed to check out in ten minutes. I already packed your bag for you and I’m in the lobby, so kiss your new friend goodbye and get your ass down here.”

Dean pushed himself up to his elbows and looked over Nick to see the digital clock on the side table. “Shit. Sorry, Lis. I’m… I’ll be right there.”

Lisa had already hung up on him and Dean knew that he was in for at least a little eye-rolling from his friend for the next hour or so. 

“Sorry,” Dean said to Nick with a crooked apology of a smile. “I guess we both slept in.”

“Best night’s sleep I’ve had in years,” he said softly, which wasn’t a proper response at all, but it brought a grin to Dean’s face. 

“Yeah well…” He ran a hand through his hair, wondering how awful and puffy-eyed he was looking. “We were always pretty compatible sleepers.”

“Mmm,  _ compatible _ ,” Nick repeated softly. “In some ways, you’re still exactly the handsome idiot from next door that I remember, and other ways…”

“And in other ways, I’m even more handsome and idiotic?” Dean teased, swinging his legs off the bed and looking for his shoes. 

“Well, you grew into your ears,” Nick chuckled warmly.

Feeling his eyebrows pinch together, Dean looked back. “What’s wrong with my ears?”

“Nothing… anymore.”

Dean ran his tongue over his teeth, chuckling to himself and refusing to rise to the bait. He pushed his phone back towards Nick, demanding. “Put your number in. I’m going to call you and annoy the hell out of you as soon as you get your phone fixed, so like, get it fixed soon.”

By the time he got his shoes tied, Nick was sliding Dean’s phone back into his pocket, which pulled a strange sort of laugh out of Dean as he felt the other man’s fingers linger on his hip. 

“I’ve… I’ve got to go,” Dean apologized, not making any move to get off the bed.

“I know.” Nick nodded, smoothing his hand over Dean’s hip and slowly down towards his knee. “I’m not stopping you.”

Feeling his stomach suddenly in knots, Dean grinned, reaching over to trace the faint freckles on the other man’s arm. “Is it weird for exes to kiss each other goodbye?”

“Oh, it’s very weird,” Nick curved his thumb over the bump of Dean’s knee, “but I never thought of you as an ex, because you know, we never actually had a chance to go on a proper date. You were always more of a… of an almost.”

Those words hit Dean harder than he’d anticipated. He stopped moving, heart pounding in his chest, questioning himself for a beat before he gave in to the impulse. He curled down over Nick, wetting his lips before closing his eyes and gently pressing his lips to Nick's.

For a moment time stood still.

They slotted together like they’d never stopped doing this. Dean's heart fluttered nervously in his chest, belly swooping and he was once again a stupid teenager kissing his crush for the first time. Nick's lips were warm, soft, and familiar, reciprocating the gentle kiss without hesitation.

Dean didn't want to stop, but he reminded himself that he was a grown-ass, responsible man with an increasingly annoyed lady friend waiting for him in the lobby.

He pulled back half an inch, resting his forehead against Nick's. He swallowed and opened his eyes, afraid to breathe, to break the sudden tension. Nick’s pale eyes opened to meet his, and for or a moment the other man looked unsure, vulnerable, almost scared.

Dean had an apology on the tip of his tongue, but then warmth bled into Nick's gentle smile and he pushed Dean away. “Get out of here, Winchester, before your lady friend comes up here to kick your ass.”

Dean chuckled, the butterflies going rampant in his belly. “Yeah, yeah. I’m going,” he said as he stood and started for the door.

"And brush your teeth!" Nick added jokingly.

Dean twisted around with his hand on the door, returning the grin that met him. "Fuck you, Luci," he chirped and opened the door.

"That's the idea," Nick agreed playfully as Dean left, shutting the door chuckling, heart still racing with equal amounts of delight and anxiety.

He hurried down to the lobby, taking the bags that Lisa pushed into his arms before following her out to their rental car. His friend was running through a rambling, irritated lecture that Dean was in no way paying attention to. Not that Lisa wasn’t full of really good points, it was just that there was far too much going on in Dean’s mind to properly feel guilty about making her wait. 

“Hello?” Lisa said with a hint of laughter edging in. She snapped her fingers loudly. “Earth to Dean? Can you hear me up there?”

They were standing at the trunk of the car, Lisa looking at him expectantly while jingling the keys back and forth. 

“You up to driving, or did your special friend last night just blow your mind that good?”

“He kissed me goodbye,” Dean said softly, and then chuckled when he realized what a horribly unhelpful answer that actually was. “Yeah, actually. If you don’t mind driving for a while that’s probably a great idea. I don’t think I’m all the way awake yet.”

“That must have been one hell of a goodbye kiss,” she teased before walking around to the driver’s side of the car and getting in. “At least you’re in a better mood today.”

They got all of five minutes into their drive before Dean couldn’t keep it to himself any longer.

“It was Nick.”

“Nick was what?” Lisa asked with a touch of nervousness in her sideways glance. 

“The guy I ran into at the hotel bar last night.”

Lisa’s eyes widened and she looked over again. 

Dean grinned, full of hopeful and happy feelings. “We stayed up for hours talking and he kissed me goodbye before I left.”

“You’re… you’re not usually a casual kisser when it comes to friends,” Lisa pointed out. 

“Ah, but I am when it comes to old boyfriends,” he said like a confession. 

“Excuse you?” She laughed a little too loudly. “Hold up. First he’s your arch-nemesis, then your once upon a time best friend, and now he’s your old boyfriend. Wow. Just wow.” Lisa was not often at a loss for words, but obviously Dean had won this round.

“Him and me, we never really went on any dates, but we’d make out sometimes… you know, like guys do, and he was the first guy I ever thought I might be in love with.”

Lisa nodded, her mouth pressed into a thin line as she frowned at the road. “As far as I know that would make him the  _ only _ guy you’ve ever thought you might be in love with. Unless you’ve been dating a lot of other guys and just forgot to tell me about them too?”

“No,” he chuckled, glad to hear the slight laughter in Lisa’s voice. “I’ve told you about all the other guys I’ve dated.” It took a lot to get the words out, but he managed to softly confess, “He’s actually the only  _ anyone  _ I ever thought I might be in love with.”

She let out a low whistling breath, quiet for nearly a mile before asking, “Last night was ok though?”

“Once it was just me and him, yeah,” Dean closed his eyes, for a moment reliving the feeling of how it felt to fall asleep next to someone he never thought he’d see again. 

“You guys have sex?”

Dean grinned, not even opening his eyes. “Not last night. No.”

“Just a kiss goodbye?”

He bit his lip, smiling, and that seemed enough of an answer for Lisa.

“You could have told me if you wanted to stay an extra day at the hotel. I could have bummed around town while you two boys sorted some things out.” 

Which was one of the main reasons that Dean had invited her along for this trip. Lisa didn’t always agree with him, but she was a very good friend. 

During their drive, Dean grimaced his way through the rest of his and Nick’s story, including the part about the letters which was still a little crippling to think about. Dean was not a fan of hurting people he cared about, especially not accidentally hurting so badly. 

Lisa kept on being good to him, happily distracting John and Mary after dinner that night so that Dean could go through the packed up boxes in Sam’s old room and find those long-hidden letters.

Five letters altogether, each on simple lined paper, lightly faded pencil lines all in Nick’s looping handwriting. It took Dean a few minutes to figure out what order they went in. 

The first letter was full of hope and happiness. Nick had made it safely to his Dad’s and Nick understood that Dean hadn’t been able to leave with him. There was even a photograph of a sixteen-year-old Nick, made mostly of sharp angles and long limbs, wearing one of Dean’s old shirts and standing, grinning, beside a short man with a dark beard and a kind smile. The back of the picture said simply ‘ _ me and my dad Chuck’ _ .

The second letter took on an uncertain tone and invited Dean to come out to Washington, either if he wanted to run away from home like he’d promised to do, or just to visit Nick. It included a phone number for Chuck’s house, and apparently Dean could call any time at all.

The letters quickly lost hope after that.

By the time Dean made it to the end of the last page he was having a hard time reading the words, his vision blurred and his eyes stinging. 

With shaking hands, he put each letter back in its envelope, and tucked the photo safely into his wallet. He ran a hand over his mouth, forcing his breaths to steady and slow before he was finally able to take out his phone. 

He didn’t expect Nick to answer, after all, Dean didn’t answer unknown numbers when they called him. He just wanted to leave a quick message: that he’d made it to his parent’s place, and how weird the tree looked without the treehouse now, and Nick better give him a call once he got his phone back in working order, because Dean didn’t realize how much he was going to miss Nick’s voice or how quickly.

Except Nick answered his phone.

Dean blinked at the lit up screen, watching the call timer slowly ticking off the seconds. 

“Hello?” Nick repeated. “Ok, well I’m going to hang up then, unless this is one of those lewd phone calls…?”

“Don’t sound so hopeful, Luci,” Dean said with forced cheerfulness in his voice.

“I  _ thought  _ it might be you.” Nick snorted softly. “By all means though, if you’d like to turn this into a lewd phone call, please feel free.”

“Don’t really have much practice with that kind of thing.” Though his chest was still tight, Dean found himself smiling.

“No?” Nick’s laughter was warm. “Well, then I’ll start. What are you wearing?”

Dean closed his eyes, grinning and soaking in the sound of the other man’s laugh. “So, uh, you got your phone fixed?”

“Ended up having to get a new one,” Nick said with a gentle sigh. “It happens.”

Before he’d hit dial, Dean had known what he wanted to say, but as silence slowly stretched between them he felt his thoughts blanking. 

“How was the drive back home?” Nick mercifully kept talking. “Does everything look like it used to?”

“Pretty much. The treehouse is gone, the kitchen’s now blue, and my bedroom is an office, but yeah, everything looks just like it used to.”

“Is it rude if I just come straight out and ask if you went looking for my letters as soon as you got there?”

“Nah. We had dinner and sat out back drinking until it got dark. My parent’s really like Lisa. I think Mom’s a little disappointed that Lisa’s happily married and she’d gonna have to keep on waiting for grandkids.” Dean looked down at the neat little stack of envelopes at his side. “I waited until my folks were talking about going to bed before I went looking for your letters.”

“And then you found them and threw them away?” There was hope in Nick’s voice, but at the same time it seemed like he knew the answer he was going to get.

Dean wondered if he’d be able to lie, but didn’t even get the chance to attempt it because it seemed that the awkward silence on his side of the phone was enough of an answer on its own.

“You said you wouldn’t,” defeat heavy in Nick’s voice.

“I think we both knew I was lying.”

“Are they as awful as I remember them being?” The other man asked finally. 

Dean shrugged even though no one was there to see it. “You didn’t write anything I wouldn’t have written if our situations were reversed.” It was the most gentle way that Dean could think to describe the pages and pages of heart-broken teen angst that he’d read.

Nick blew out a loud breath. “And now you’re going to throw them out, right?”

“I can… but I’m keeping the picture.”

“What picture?”

“Of you and your dad.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little weird for a grown man to keep a picture of a teenage boy?”

“Not if it’s a picture of my best friend. No. Why would that be weird?” Dean smiled. “Plus, I’ll keep it in my wallet with the picture of me and Sammy when we were kids. Totally not weird.”

There was an uneasy sound from the other end of the phone, like Nick was looking for a good argument. 

“And if you don’t like that, then send me a new picture of you,” Dean offered.

“Like right now?”

Dean blinked. “Sure?”

“And then you’ll burn whatever evidence you have that I was ever a super awkward awful teenager, and we can just never bring it up again?”

Almost protectively, Dean put a hand on the letters sitting beside him. “I’ll think about it.”

“Can you at least  _ try  _ to lie convincingly to me?”

“I’ll  _ definitely _ think about it,” Dean offered, feeling a grin starting.

“You’re the worst,” Nick sighed.

Dean heard the distant sounds of movement on the other end of the phone. “You still there?” He asked.

“Yeah, switched you to speaker, and trying not to drop the phone,” a soft chuckle edging into the other man’s words.

“If you’re in the middle of something, I can let you go. I just wanted to make sure you had my number.” Dean didn’t  _ want _ to get off the phone, but he understood that most people didn’t really enjoy long calls when texting would work just as well.

“No. It’s fine. I was looking for a picture, but forgot this is a new phone and I’ve got nothing.”

“It’s fine,” Dean laughed, then pulled his phone back from his face as he heard the message notification. It was a picture from the man he was talking to, and after Dean looked at it a little too long, he felt warmth build in his chest as he laughed a little harder. “Are you in the bath?”

“I am,” Nick sounded pleased.

“I didn’t know men took bubble baths.”

“They do when the hotel they’re staying at has a tub big enough to fit them.”

Dean looked back at the picture on his phone, at Nick’s eyes the color of rain clouds, and the paleness of his shoulders that almost matched the color of the tub behind his head, and the slight pink flush to his cheeks. Dean shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment so he could try and focus on the conversation they were almost having. 

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve taken a bath since I was like nine,” Dean confessed. “I just got too tall. Also, showers are superior.”

“It’s ok to just admit you’re jealous,” Nick laughed.

Dean started to argue that it was absolutely not jealousy that he was feeling when he looked at that picture on his phone, but the bedroom door opened and Lisa popped her head in. He hastily lowered the phone, hiding it against his chest like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing, and asked, “What’s up.”

“I was hoping to go to bed,” she said with an amused smile, nodding towards the bed against the wall. 

“Is it that late?” Dean asked, glancing at his watch and grimacing. He held the phone back to his ear. “Hey, Luci. I’ve got to go. I forgot about the time difference.”

“It’s fine,” Nick didn’t sound at all bothered. “Talk later?”

“Absolutely,” Dean promised, feeling only a little self-conscious that Lisa had gone over to the bed and was going through her suitcase. “Night,” he said softly, waiting until the other man said goodbye before hanging up the phone and tucking it into his pocket. Before Lisa had a chance to notice, he picked up the pile of envelopes addressed to him and tucked them back into the fake book he’d pulled them out of. 

“Who’s  _ Lucy _ ?” Lisa asked in a teasing voice, giving Dean a lot of side-eye.

“It’s just Nick,” Dean said, and then noticed the very odd look he got from his friend and thought maybe more of an explanation might have been needed. “When we were kids the neighbors down the street had this freaking giant black dog named Lucifer, super nice dog, but massive,” he chuckled, realizing this was already too long of a story and Lisa wasn’t going to think the nickname for Nick was nearly as funny as Dean always had. “Sammy and me were throwing a ball out front for the dog, yelling ‘ _ go get the ball Luci _ ’, but he was a lot more interested in just licking Sam. And then Nick came and brought the ball back, and I said  _ ‘thanks, Luci’ _ because I was a shit and thought it was funny to call him the dog’s name. He hit me for it and so I  _ had to _ keep calling him Luci, and I’m still doing it now even though we’re adults... because I’m still kind of a shit.”

Lisa slowly shook her head and went back to her bag.

“You asked,” Dean rolled his eyes.

“I just think it’s cute that you have a pet name for him.”

“It’s not a  _ pet _ name,” he said in horror.

“It is if you say it like you just said it to him.” She grinned, obviously feeding on his sudden discomfort. 

He laughed uncomfortably, waving off her accusations before collecting the clothes he planned to sleep in. “I’ll see you in the morning, Lis.”

“ _ Dean _ ,” she dragged his name out, coming over to wrap her arms around him. “Do you have a crush on your old high school sweetheart?”

“I’m way too old to be getting crushes on anyone.”

“Which in Dean means ‘ _ hell yeah I do, did you even listen to me gushing about him for the whole car ride today?”  _ She dropped her voice low, like she always did when badly impersonating him.  _ “I grin like an idiot every time I think about him. And maybe you didn’t notice, but pretty much every guy I’ve dated these last few years actually looks a lot like him, but maybe we shouldn’t talk about that.’ _ ”

“We really shouldn’t talk about that,” he agreed, momentarily distressed because Lisa had made a very unpleasant point. Dean was pretty open to dating just about anyone, but every single guy he could remember making the first move on had been some lanky blonde with blue eyes and a sharp tongue.

Lisa gave him a squeeze, comforting as she offered, “Maybe you’ve just got a type.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” he agreed a little too eagerly, really wishing that his friend was right, but knowing the truth of it. 

They talked a bit more before Dean said goodnight and headed downstairs. He could have shared a bed with Lisa, they’d done it many times in the past, but Dean didn’t think he had the emotional reserves left for any more of his friend’s painfully accurate observations right then. 

\----  **Autumn, 2020** \---

The first night that Nick missed their regularly scheduled phone call, Dean did his best not to worry, but in the two months since the wedding, he hadn’t once gone to sleep without first telling his friend goodnight. 

And it wasn’t like they’d never had a missed call from one another, but usually, within half an hour there was a return call or a text.

It was nearly noon the next day when Dean’s phone finally lit up with an incoming call from Nick.

Dean bit back the demand of ‘where the hell have you been’ and clamped his teeth down sharp before he could say any of the worried thoughts that had been running through his head from the night before. Instead, he took a moment to count to five before hitting ‘accept’ and pressing his phone to his ear. 

“Hey, stranger,” he said through a measured smile. “Everything alright?”

Nick made a softly pained noise, and begged, “Not so loud. Please.”

Dean recognized that tone, even though he’d never heard it out of his friend’s mouth before. He sighed and pushed himself up from his desk to go and close his office door before asking, “Are you hungover?”

A repeat of that softly suffering sound was as good as an answer.

Smiling, only slightly irritated at Nick, Dean sat back down. “Rough night last night?”

He grunted.

“I’m so glad you felt up for a phone call. This is riveting conversation, Lu.”

That drew out a soft chuckle from Nick. “Sorry. I just got out of bed and saw a couple missed calls from you. I don’t think I’m awake yet.”

“A text that you were still alive would have been just as good,” Dean said gently. 

“No. You called, so I’m calling back.” 

“Alright. You called. Thank you.” He smiled, wondering why he’d ever been so concerned in the first place. “Go get yourself some Aspirin and a couple glasses of water. Call me back tonight when you’re feeling human again.”

“You at work?”

“I am.” Dean chuckled, not sure if Nick had actually always been this stubborn, or if it was new. “But I’m on lunch… you doing alright?”

“I think I’m trying to make coffee.” It wasn’t really an answer, but it would have to do. There were sounds of dishes clinking, and the erratic tapping of dog toenails against the floor that Dean had grown to love over the last couple months. 

“Let me know how that one pans out.”

“I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat,” followed by Nick swearing softly as more dishes banged together. 

“Maybe you should try for something easier than coffee,” Dean suggested gently. “Like… drinking straight from the tap and then laying back down for a few hours.”

“I was going to call you last night, but I couldn’t find my phone.”

“So you had a fun night then?”

“It was a going-away party for,” Nick paused to yawn, “one of the other Captains. I don’t really remember most of it.”

“You know, other than the general teenage debauchery we got up to, you never struck me as a party-hard kind of guy,” Dean leaned back in his chair, balancing his knees against the edge of the desk. “You like to be in control too much.”

Nick fell into silence for nearly a minute, and Dean wasn’t sure if coffee making was really taking that much of the other man’s brainpower or what, but then Nick sighed and said, “I hate that you went into psychology.”

“Don’t need a degree to know you like that, Nicky. That’s just how you always are. Very…” Dean searched for the words he wanted, “steady and predictable and in control of yourself.”

“ _ Predictable _ ?”

“Not in a bad way.”

“Predictable,” Nick repeated, obviously not placated. “Just because you know how to push my buttons doesn’t make me predictable.”

“I don’t know, man. I sort of mentally predicted that would be your exact reply to me calling you predictable, so...” Dean teased, grinning to himself at the indignant sounds coming over the phone. 

“I’m exciting,” Nick argued weakly, defensively, “and unpredictable.”

“And hungover enough that your vocabulary is completely shot, my friend.” In that moment Dean felt absolutely nothing but warmth for the other man. A lifetime apart and years of hurt feelings had all been shoved aside so easily, and when they talked like this it was as if they’d never been apart. 

“I’m clear enough to talk,” Nick argued, sharp little barbs in the way he over-annunciated each syllable. “And clear enough for other things.”

“Other things,” Dean repeated, trying to keep the smile from his voice, very sure that Nick was in no way ready for anything at all other than going back to bed.

“You wanna have sex?”

Though it wasn’t the first time that he’d said those words to Dean, the impact had not lessened. It was a simple question, obviously a joke at this point, but it put an unexpected flicker of arousal in his belly. 

“Yeah, no,” Dean bit the words off carefully, grounding himself, refusing to let Nick rile him up. “I was thinking about finishing this sandwich I bought for lunch and then I’ve got an appointment in about half an hour. Not really time to hop a plane and get my hands on you.”

“Phone sex,” Nick clarified. “Or is that too predictable for you.”

“I’m at work, man.”

Even hungover, Nick was relentless. Even with the miles and miles between them, he could somehow sense the unease in Dean and he dug in eagerly. “What are you wearing?” 

Dean snorted and looked down at himself. “Blue jeans and a Metallica t-shirt? Does that do anything for you?” 

“Aren’t you at work?” Nick demanded, “Shouldn’t you have a crisp white shirt with your sleeves rolled up, and a blue silk tie or something?”

“Ok. Maybe a little too specific there, buddy.” That warmth Dean felt was spreading though, his heart starting to race. He pushed it all down, determined to remain at least ever so slightly in control of the situation. “I work every day with little mini-yous. Would teenage Nick ever even consider opening up to a man with a white shirt and a tie?”

“I might have if he looked like you.”

Dean chuckled, realizing that yeah, young Nick did actually actively go looking for trouble with older men and Dean sort of walked into that one. “You know, I’d offer to get dressed up for you tonight and send you a picture, but I don’t think I own a blue tie.”

“Give me your mailing address and you’ll have one in two to three business days.”

“Oh wow. Look at the time. You know what? I’ve really got to go,” Dean teased.

“Come on,” Nick encouraged, “no tie then, since you probably don’t know how to tie one anyways. But at least the white shirt with the sleeves rolled up bit.”

“I’ll call you tonight, Nick.” Dean glazed over the other man’s words, grinning into the disappointed sounds coming over his phone. “And drink some water. Coffee isn’t what your hangover needs.”

“Yes,  _ Doctor Winchester _ ,” Nick grumbled before saying something like goodbye and hanging up.

For whatever reason, Dean felt like he’d won that round. 

He looked at the phone still in his hand, hesitating before putting in back on silent so it wouldn’t somehow interrupt his next few appointments. Shrugging, gently convincing himself that there wasn’t any harm in it, Dean opened the text messages between him and his friend and typed out his home address. 

If nothing else he felt a sudden need to prove to the other man that he at least knew how to tie a tie correctly. It was an extra point that he wanted for himself. One more win for Dean, but it was also something that he very quickly forgot all about until weeks later.

**____________________________________**

“A Skype call?” Dean asked in confusion. “But we’re already on a call. What’s the difference?”

“Um, I’d be able to see you?” Nick laughed, like the answer was beyond obvious.

Dean scratched the bridge of his nose and then pulled back, grimacing with how dirty his hands were. “If this is that phone sex plan of yours again, you’ve got to at least give me a chance to take a shower first or something. I just got in from working on the car.”

“I mean,” Nick chuckled and it was this low, almost hungry sound that did funny things to Dean’s insides. “Not where I was going with this idea. I was thinking more like it would be nice to get to see you while we talk. Like we’re properly hanging out. We could even make a day of it.”

Dean pushed the speakerphone button with a knuckle before setting his phone safely off to one side and began scrubbing the black smears from his hands and arms. “That sounds... that sounds awesome, Lu. You free tonight?”

“This weekend?” Nick counter offered quickly.

“I’ve got some social work hours down at the shelter most of the weekend, but I’m free in the evenings.”

“I want you for a whole day. All to myself.”

Dean was grateful for the lack of Skype right then, because he felt warmth creeping up his neck and over his cheeks as he grinned stupidly to himself. “Weekend after that? The fourteenth and fifteenth I’ve got off.”

“I am writing it on my calendar.”

“Of course you are, you weirdo.” Dean turned off the faucet and pulled a dishtowel out of one of the kitchen drawers. “And you sure this is just for bro hang out time, and not some sneaky way to try and get me naked on camera for you?”

Nick got very quiet. 

“Because you never sent me that tie, Lu. How am I supposed to properly seduce you if I don’t have a perfect blue silk tie to go with my crisp, clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled up just right?”

“Ok, look, we’re all allowed our little fantasies. You don’t get to guilt me for mine.”

“If that’s what gets you off, man. I’m just saying your erotic friend-fantasy is coming off a little weak.” Dean had been teasing, because that was simply how they’d talked to each other since they were sixteen years old. But he couldn’t stop himself from grinning at the defensiveness in his friend’s tone. “Best you can come up with is really just business clothes?”

“It goes along with you working late at the office, your secretary is already gone for the night…” Nick trailed off, seeming to get lost in his own words.

Dean shook his head, easily seeing exactly how that would play out. “And you come in to tell me that I’ve missed our dinner reservations,  _ again _ , and you’re fed up with me always putting my work first. You’ve already got the dogs and your things packed up, and don’t even bother calling you.”

“Damn right I would take the dogs, but also, why’ve you got to ruin it?”

“Because I’ve dated guys like you, and that is exactly what happened,  _ multiple _ times.”

“You’re the least fun. You know that?”

“I’m the  _ most _ fun,” Dean laughed defensively. “I’m just saying, if we’re ever living together and I’m suddenly working late and being a dick to you, then please dump my sorry ass, because I’ve obviously got my priorities all kind of messed up.

Dean was glad that his friend couldn’t see him, but at the same time he really wished that he could have seen the other man’s face in the silence that followed that accidentally slip up on Dean’s side of things. 

They were friends. Friends who flirted. Friends who had a lot of history which indicated that maybe talking about possible futures together should be kept on hold until a time that Dean knew one way or another if ideas like that were even welcome.

“Now isn’t it your turn to ask me about my erotic friend-fantasies?” Dean said into the thinly stretched silence. 

Nick cleared his throat and dragged out a thoughtful sound. “Not sure if that’s a safe road for us to go down right now, Dean.”

“Over the phone, or in general?”

“Oh, just on the phone,” he clarified with a deep chuckle. “Apparently you’re already in need of a shower. I’d hate to make that worse.”

“My need for a shower makes now the perfect time,” Dean picked up his phone and carried it with him to his room. He started to pull off his sweaty, grease-stained clothes that he always used when working on his car. “Come on. Ask. Give me something to think about while I’m in the shower.”

“Maybe tomorrow night,” he teased right back, seeming to enjoy this game. “The dogs want to go out for their evening walk.”

“You’re mean. You know that?”

“I have heard that, yes.” Nick’s laugh was warm and deep. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Dean.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed before hanging up, his knees feeling weak as the sounds of his friend’s laughter settled deep into the corners of his mind. 

**____________________________________**

It was really a stupid thing to worry about, but as their Skype ‘date’ loomed closer, Dean found himself taking the time to clean his house, remembering how the clutter and mess had always bothered Nick when they were kids. 

He struggled to decide that morning if he should shave or just embrace that slightly scruffy weekend look, frowning at himself in the bathroom mirror, dreading the fact that he’d have to get dressed soon and how much a chore that was going to be if the past few days were any indication. 

It was really stupid. 

He and his friend had been sending each other pictures along with their texts for months now. It wasn’t like this was a blind date and he needed to make sure he looked  _ perfect _ . Hell, if anyone in his life had ever seen Dean looking less than perfect, it was Nick. The night after the wedding reception alone they’d both been bruised, a little tipsy, and putting less than their best foot forward. 

Still, Dean found himself digging into the back of his closet to find a flannel. Not as nice as a white shirt might have been, but a whole lot closer to his normal clothes so he wouldn’t feel awkward about it. 

And by the time that the Skype app on his phone started singing, Dean looked down at himself and still managed to feel overdressed and like an absolute lunatic for doing as much as he had, just to have a face to face phone call with a man he’d known all his life.

He actually missed the call while standing there in a mild panic while he fought the urge to change into a t-shirt and unmake his bed.

Mentally screaming at himself to calm the fuck down, Dean called Nick back. “Hey,” he softly sang, and wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole. He lifted his phone up to his face so he could grin at Nick’s bemused expression. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Nick tilted his head to one side, dappled sunlight making patterns over his cheek. He was outside, clear autumn sky stretching out behind him and a line of tall trees. 

“Where you at?”

“Just walking the girls. They’ve been cooped up for the last few hours.” Nick angled his phone down to show his two dogs happily trotting on either side of his long legs.

Dean sank down on the edge of his bed, smiling at the dogs he’d seen dozens of pictures of over the last months. He’d never been a ‘dog-person’ until Nick, and now Dean had a picture of his friend and those two doe-eyed furry monsters as the background on his phone. 

Nick’s face came back into view, his awkward half-smile utterly perfect. “You did have me worried or a second, that maybe you forgot about our date.”

“Never,” Dean lay back on his bed, smiling at his friend and wondering why they’d waited so long to talk like this. No amount of texts and phone calls could possibly take the place of talking face to face. “I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. God you look good.”

“Shut up,” Nick chuckled, his smile turning to a grin as he looked away, the phone momentarily showing only sky. “I look like I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“Everything ok?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Just a little stressed.”

“Tell me your stories,” Dean encouraged, honestly interested and a hint worried. 

“Nah. It’s… it’s nothing.”

“Come on, man. I’m here all day. What’s up?”

Nick’s eyes widened a touch and his smile went tight. “It’s nothing.”

“See, now that’s the problem with wanting to talk on a Skype call. I can see that you’re lying to me.”

The landscape twisted behind Nick, sky giving way to what looked like house siding and a sliver of a front porch. Nick had sat himself down and curious dog ears pricked up and moved in and out of the edges of the screen.

“I―” Nick took a sharp breath between his teeth, that wry smile still in place. “I did something stupid and I’m halfway between just pulling the trigger or backing out.”

Dean rolled onto his side, propping his phone against his wrist, and looking at his friend expectantly.

Nick’s head fell back to rest against what looked like a wooden door, his smile crooked and strange. “So… there’s this guy I like.”

Words that hit Dean with what felt like a physical blow, his insides suddenly in knots. He forced out a strangled little, “Oh?” And tried desperately to school his expression into something curious and friendly. 

“I met him back at the wedding reception.” Color was creeping over Nick’s cheeks and he closed one eye, cringing a little as he spoke. “We’ve been talking for months now, and I might have impulsively bought a plane ticket out to see him without running it by him first.”

Dean hated this man who’d caught Nick’s eye. 

Whoever the man was, Dean hated him so much right then he felt sick. 

“Well,” he kept that forced cheerfulness in his voice, suddenly hating that this conversation was happening with a camera on him because it meant he had to be very careful with what he was letting show on his face. “Tell me about the son of a bitch. Is he cute? Is he good to you?”

“Yeah, and yeah,” Nick’s awkward expression was blooming into something wild and beautiful as he spoke. “I mean, he’s not the sharpest crayon in the box, but he’s sweet, and he makes me happy.”

“I can see that.”

Nick grinned. “I do worry though. I mean… he can be really dense sometimes. Like  _ really _ dense.”

“You’re falling in love with an idiot, is what you’re saying?”

“It feels like it,” Nick confessed, laughing softly. 

“That does seem to be your type.” Dean chuckled too, trying to mask the hurt he was feeling. 

It wasn’t like him and Nick had made promises or anything this time around. They were friends. Just friends, but it felt like Dean was losing so much more than that as he watched the joy dancing in Nick’s eyes.

His doorbell suddenly rang, probably just a delivery guy dropping off something. 

Dean didn’t even bother to sit up. “So,” he asked, “when are you gonna go see this guy?”

“Soon. Hopefully.”

The doorbell rang again, this time annoyingly long, like whoever was out there was leaning on the button. 

“Sorry, there’s someone at the door,” Dean apologized, setting the phone on the bed, calling to Nick as he left the room, “I’ll be right back.”

Annoyed, and not even bothering to peek and see who it was, he slid the deadbolt and opened the door with a sharp greeting on the tip of his tongue. 

Dean’s breath caught in his throat. Whatever he’d been about to say was completely forgotten as he found himself face to face with a familiar wicked grin. Nick stood there on the doorstep, chuckling softly and looking like he’d just stepped out of one of Dean’s dreams.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, forgot that this chapter actually gets a little steamy (you can thank my lovely beta reader for that :D, she helped out immensely by writing pretty much every kissing scene in this story), so you've all got that to look forward to 
> 
> Thank you guys again for coming along for this pain-train of a story, that mercifully gets an incredibly sugary sweet ending, because we all need more soft sweet endings in our lives <3

It would have been a lovely moment to stretch out forever. The perfect surprise that he’d never known he’d needed. Dean’s chest felt tight, struggling to remember how to breathe as he fought with his confusion.

He could have stood there for hours, grinning back at his old friend, catching the warm, clean scent of Nick that was carried between them on the breeze, except there were suddenly two very curious dogs fighting over who would be first to headbutt Dean’s crotch and step on his feet. 

“O-oh wow. Thanks. Thanks.” Dean backed up quickly, offering down both of his hands for the dogs to smell. “Yes. It’s nice to meet you too.”

“Can I come in?” Nick asked, his voice light with laughter. 

“Please. Don’t leave me alone with your dogs,  _ oh _ , hey! Watch where you’re sniffing.”

“Pandora. Freja. No.” Nick’s entire tone shifted, becoming serious and firm. “Come here.”

Both dogs trotted back to stand looking up at their owner, their tails swaying gently side to side as they waited for him to speak again. 

Nick looked back to Dean with a smile. “Can we take them to the back yard?”

“Yeah,” Dean was still struggling to get his bearings. “Of course. Yeah. Come on in, you son of a bitch. Fucking hell, man. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Dean let the other man step into the entryway, door closing behind him, before throwing out all pretenses of taking the dogs to the back yard. Dean threw his arms around his friend’s waist, hugging tight enough to be sure that this wasn’t a dream, tight enough to pull the other man an inch off the floor. 

Nick hugged back just as hard, burying his face into Dean’s neck and holding him like he never intended to let him go.

Though it pained him, Dean stepped away first, struggling to pull back and get away from the dog nose that was poking his ass. 

“ _ Stop _ ,” he begged the dog, not sure which one he was addressing. Dean didn’t know enough about dogs to even say what breed they were. Just small and fuzzy, with reddish fur, long ears, and surprisingly good at hopping up on their back legs so they could jam their faces curiously into places that Dean would really rather not have a dog’s face go. 

“Backyard, wow,” Dean clapped his hands, getting the dog’s attention and leading them both to the back door, letting them out onto his lawn. They took off running, their leashes trailing after them as they ran from one spot to the next, sniffing every unexciting bit of grass or rock they could find. 

Relieved for the small moment of peace to catch his breath, Dean started to turn back to his friend, wanting to ask just what the hell was going on, but he couldn't move. Arms wrapped slowly and purposefully around Dean’s waist, Nick’s chin coming to rest on his shoulder. 

Words fled from Dean and he abandoned any idea of talking in favor of closing his eyes and leaning back into the other man. He breathed out long and slow, relaxed, smoothing his hands over his friend’s arms and resting his head against Nick’s.

They stayed like that for minutes. No words. Just being close.

Dean finally asked the question that had been swimming through his mind since the other man stepped into his house. “That guy you met… the stupid one… he’s me again, isn’t he?”

Nick snickered softly.

“Fuck you, Lu.” Dean reached up and lightly smacked the side of his friend’s head. “You really had me going.”

“I was trying to be  _ direct _ .”

“Yeah, same kind of direct as when we were sixteen,” Dean grumbled.

“Really thought you might have gotten a bit smarter since then.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Dean turned his head enough to graze the other man’s jaw with his smile, speaking against warm skin, “I’m just as much of a dumbass now as I was back then. Especially when it comes to you.”

Nick chuckled, the sound raising goosebumps along Dean’s skin. “You’re the worst flirt, you know that?”

“If you think  _ this _ is flirting,” Dean gently patted the arms still wrapped solidly around his waist, “then you’ve been hanging around the wrong people.”

Nick gave him another squeeze before letting go almost reluctantly. He moved around Dean, out to the yard to catch his dogs and unclip their leashes, winding the straps slowly around a hand. “So, uh, how much trouble am I in for just showing up like this?” He asked, glancing up from under lidded eyes.

“How much trouble do you wanna’ be in?” Dean asked softly, letting heat creep into his words, before he cracked a grin. “ _ That _ was flirting. See the difference?”

It was rare to see a full-blown blush on Nick. Rare and gorgeous as he turned a stunning smile to Dean. “Alright, smartass. Serious question for a moment, I’ve got a hotel room booked for the night, but do you think I should cancel it?”

“That all depends,” Dean leaned on the doorframe, folding his arms and sizing up his friend, “do you know if the hotel comes with a big ol’ bathtub for you to take one of your super not weird, perfectly normal bubble baths? Because I’ve just got a normal-sized tub here.”

“How about your shower?” Nick asked in a way that would have passed for innocent if Dean couldn’t see that grin. “You think it’s big enough for two?”

Dean had to look down at his feet, too flustered to answer immediately.

“ _ That _ was also flirting,” Nick clarified very unnecessarily. 

“Well now who’s being a smartass?” Dean loved the joking, but he was still reeling from the unexpected visit and struggling to act anything resembling normal. “If you want you can stay here tonight. You know I’m not going to kick you out.”

“I didn’t  _ know _ anything,” Nick breathed, shaking his head. “I learned a long time ago not to assume anything when it came to you.”

Not wanting to assume anything either, Dean skirted having to give a real answer to the other man’s question. “I’ve got a spare room,” he offered carefully, “Sam uses it when he comes out to visit, and if his gangly ass can fit on the bed, so can yours.”

A flash of something unreadable moved over Nick’s face, but it was gone again before Dean really had a moment to properly worry that he’d given the wrong answer. 

“I’ll take that spare bed,” Nick agreed, pulling out his phone and tapping away, presumably canceling his hotel reservation. 

Dean watched, waiting a moment and trying to pick the right words before asking, “How long can you stay?”

Smiling, still looking at his phone, Nick shrugged. “I took a week of leave, figured I’d go visit my sister once you got tired of having me around.”

The selfish part of Dean wanted to simply claim Nick as his own for the whole week. Instead he played with one of the lower buttons on his shirt before looking up and offering, “You can stay until you get tired of having me around.”

Nick’s eyes closed, his mouth pressed into a thin smile.

All the usual confidence that Dean felt had abandoned him the moment he’d opened his front door, and try as he might there was no chance of getting it back as long as he let himself stand on the back porch, worrying that at any moment he was going to wake up. 

“Hey, man,” he started, chuckling when he saw Nick jump and open his eyes, as if he’d forgotten that he wasn’t simply alone in the yard. Dean grinned, asking, “You also feeling jumpy as hell, like you’re worried you’re gonna say the wrong thing and fuck this up?”

“That is the understatement of the year right there,” he laughed sharply.

“Wanna get a drink and just sit on the couch and talk like we’d been planning to do today anyways?”

“Dean, it’s ten in the morning. Might be a bit early for a drink.”

“The drink doesn’t have to be alcoholic. I’ve got coffee, maybe a box of tea that Sam and Jess left last time they were here. Chocolate milk. Regular milk… orange juice?” He was quickly running out of drinks to offer to his still laughing friend.

“Coffee would be great.”

Dean was only too happy to finally have something to do other than stand there gazing warmly at his friend like a lovestruck fool. He made up a pot of coffee, cringing as he watched the other man destroy it with an obscene amount of milk and sugar.

They settled on to the couch, both turning to face the other, tucking legs up onto the sofa like it was the most natural thing. Dogs came thundering in, only to leave again after they’d checked on Nick, trotting through the house to continue their investigation. 

“You didn’t bring a bag or anything,” Dean finally noticed.

“It’s out in the car,” Nick said, slowly stirring his anemic pale coffee. “Like I said… I didn’t want to make any assumptions.”

“Dude, I will give you a spare key. I don’t care that you live a couple states away, you’re always welcome.” As soon as the words left Dean’s mouth he winced at the pushiness of the offer. Feeling like it was already too late to retreat, he added, “Part of me always worried about that after you disappeared. That maybe you’d come back one night, but wouldn’t be able to get in the house since you didn’t have a key, and you wouldn’t knock because… well, it’s you, and you’d be worried about waking people up or something stupid like that.”

“Yeah… that does sound like younger me,” he admitted with a halfhearted smile.

“I left my window open for you,” Dean smiled back self consciously. “Even when it started getting cold out, I left it open a crack so if you showed up you could get in.”

“I’m not sure if that’s sad or sweet.”

“Let’s go with sweet.” Dean tried to hide an awkward laugh in a sip of coffee.

“I always avoided telling you back when we were kids, because I didn’t want to ruin it―but for all your tough-guy talk, you were actually always pretty sweet.”

“How dare you come into my house and lie like that,” Dean teased, reaching out with one foot to poke the other man’s ankle. “I was an annoying son of a bitch and we both know it.”

Nick shook his head, smiling. “It was all a front. I saw how you treated my sister and your brother. I was also there with you every night you came down to sleep on the couch with me so I wouldn’t be alone. I think… I might even remember you putting an arm around me or holding my hand a couple times.”

“You must be thinking of some other jerk who lived next door.”

Nick chewed on his lip, watching Dean for a breath before shaking his head. “No. It was definitely you. It was always you.”

A funny feeling wrapped around the base of Dean’s spine, soft and hopeful as it crept up his neck and brought heat to his cheeks. 

Hiding behind a grin, he did his best to steer the conversation towards safer topics, away from their childhood and how they may or may not have held hands. Talk like that only made Dean wonder why they were still sitting on opposite ends of the couch like they were afraid of one another.

At some point he got up to put their empty mugs in the sink, and when he returned to the couch he sat in the middle so that Nick’s tucked up feet were against his leg. It was probably a little too obvious, but Dean’s ability to care about that seemed to retreat in direct relation to how long Nick kept smiling at him. 

By the time that Dean’s stomach started wanting lunch, Nick’s legs were draped over his, the other man practically sitting in Dean’s lap while they talked about nothing important.

They could have gone out somewhere to eat, made a proper date of it for once in their lives, but that would have been them leaving the house which would have gotten in the way of whatever they were gravitating towards. 

So Dean offered to make lunch, only to be shot down.

"I invited myself to your house without us ever even talking about it once. You're not feeding me too."

"So, your stubborn self just isn't going to eat while you're here, or…"

"Let me take you out to lunch."

"I don't usually let guys buy me food unless we've been going out a while."

"And I don't let guys cook for me unless it's breakfast," Nick quipped, swinging his long legs down to the floor, but pausing before he could stand. "And since when? When have you  _ ever _ turned down free food?"

"In general? Never." He grinned to himself, nudging a knee against Nick's but pulling back from the touch before saying, "it's just a bit different when it's someone I like."

"You just need to be the  _ 'man' _ ," Nick dragged the word out unfavorably, "in the relationship?" 

"My dad always said I should never let a lady pay for anything."

Nick raised an eyebrow. 

"And… I'm pretty sure he just meant anyone I was dating and not just girls, since that was advice he gave back before either of us knew I liked guys too."

"Didn't know you and I were dating."

"Well I don't recall us ever breaking up," Dean managed to say in a casual teasing tone, somehow keeping the nervousness he felt out of his voice. "So,  _ technically _ yeah, we're sort of still dating."

Nick looked at him a little too long, a little too quietly. 

Dean forced out a chuckle. "Lighten up, Lu. Come on, learn to take a joke."

A breath of laughter escaped the other man, his shoulders suddenly relaxing. "You probably don't want to joke about things like that, Dean. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself if I decided to take you seriously."

Dean did know though. 

He knew exactly what he'd do.

It involved kissing that uncertain hint of a smile right off the other man's lips, until there wasn't any room left for confusion or misunderstandings between them. 

In the end, Dean agreed to let Nick buy lunch only if Dean could make them dinner. Nick agreed to the fair trade, which left Dean with only a few hours to overthink what meal he could make that would impress his friend.

He settled on grilling hamburgers and making homemade burger buns and freshly cut French fries. It felt like the right balance between 'normal' food, and 'I'm really good at cooking and would take such good care of you if you'd let me' food.

On the first bite, Nick's eyes fluttered close and the sound that escaped his throat was positively X-rated.

Dean grinned, squirming only a little in his seat. "Right?"

Nick made a low noise before taking another, slower bite. 

"You want me to leave you two alone?" 

With a smooth chuckle, Nick looked up from his food. "Sorry I ever questioned you making your own buns. You were right, much better than store-bought."

"Luci, Luci, Luci. When will you learn? I'm  _ always _ right."

“I’ve known you since we were five, and I can count on one hand all the times that you’ve been right.”

They teased one another through the whole meal, and Dean wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. The dogs stayed beneath the table, not exactly begging for food, but definitely ready and present just in case one of the humans was careless enough to drop anything. Having never owned a pet of his own, Dean hadn’t built up any kind of resistance to the pitiful brown eyes looking up at him with such hope, and he shared a couple of fries with each dog until Nick took notice and told him to knock it off. 

“But look at them,” Dean leaned back in his chair, smiling at the dog heads resting on either of his knees, “they’re hungry.”

“You saw me feed them less than an hour ago.”

Since he had no idea how long his friend and the dogs planned to stay, Dean decided it was probably best to make friends with the girls, and if that meant sharing French fries, then that is what he was prepared to do. 

Dean rolled his eyes, and waited until Nick looked away before sneaking two more fries down to his new friends who wagged their tails and nosed hopefully at his empty hands. By the end of his meal more than half of his fries had been shared with the two beasts beneath the table―despite all of Nick’s protests. 

“Alright, jerk, come on.”

Dean looked up from his empty plate, cocking a half-smile. “Yeah? Where are we going?”

“You’re taking the girls on a walk with me.”

“Even though they’ve been running around the yard all day?”

Nick snorted softly and nodded. “If they don’t get a walk tonight they’ll be digging holes in your yard or chewing on your furniture… so really, it’s your choice.”

Even though Dean was fairly certain that the two very well behaved dogs wouldn’t chew up his couch if given the opportunity, he figured it would be stupid to argue with the experienced dog owner. 

One of the perks of living in the suburbs was that it was still light out even after the sun had gone down. The combination of street lights and porch lights marked the easy path all the way down to the neighborhood park. Dean had never in his life walked a dog, and it wasn’t a complicated task, but he found it hard to stay focused on the dog trotting alongside him once Nick reached over and took his hand. 

“The neighbors are gonna see,” Dean said without really thinking that thought all the way through first. 

Nick’s calloused fingers slipped through Dean’s as he pulled away.

“Not what I meant,” he said quickly, grabbing his friend’s hand again. “I was just thinking out loud. Sorry.” Dean gave the other man’s hand a squeeze before lacing their fingers together. “I was just thinking that if you don’t stay for a few days then all the old ladies living around here are gonna think you’re just some one-night stand. I’m going to get the dirtiest looks. I’ll get lectured by the local moms. I think you’ll have to stay the rest of the week, just to be safe.”

“Oh no. Not the  _ moms _ .”

“They’re terrifying,” he managed to say with a straight face, watching the slow smile that played over Nick’s lips. “You and me, we’re old friends. You wouldn’t set me up for long lectures during neighborhood barbeques. You’ll have to stay the rest of the week.”

“Or you could just ask me to stay instead of pretending to be afraid of old women.”

“This isn’t pretending. You don’t mess around with southern old ladies.” Dean skimmed his thumb over his friend’s drawing light patterns. “But… yeah. I wouldn’t mind a couple more days of this.”

Which wasn’t technically a question. Even still, Dean waited for an answer. 

By midnight, he was still waiting, leaning in the doorway to the guest room, arms crossed over his chest, finding things to keep talking about despite the fact that he and his friend had both told each other goodnight at least a dozen times. 

“Are there even any good movies out right now?” Nick asked with a yawn. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed with the blanket pulled up over his knees, smiling at Dean. 

“I don’t know. But we can check in the morning.”

“Or we can just stay in and watch Netflix.”

“You don’t wanna be seen in public with me, is that it?” Dean teased. 

“I just don’t want to leave my girls in an unfamiliar house for too long,” he explained, reaching out to scratch one of the dog’s ears. “No matter how many times I explain it to them, I don’t think they ever really get that I’m coming right back.”

Dean wouldn’t argue about another day stuck at home with Nick. It actually sounded amazing. “Alright. We’ll find things to do around here so your girls won't have to be alone. I just don’t want you feeling like you’re stuck here in the house.”

“I knew what I was getting myself into coming out here,” Nick flashed a little grin, looking down at his lap. “You don’t think I over thought every single part of this whole surprise visit?”

“Apparently not  _ every _ part of it, because I’m still waiting on that blue silk tie you promised me forever ago. Don’t think I forgot.”

“It’s in my suitcase,” Nick chuckled uneasily. “But I sort of wrapped it, and then felt way too self-conscious to give it to you.”

“Ooh,” Dean wiggled his fingers in excitement. He pushed off the doorframe and into the room.

Nick’s bag had been neatly set on top of the dresser, his clothes he’d been wearing all day folded carefully and laid over the top, like some sort of crazy person. Dean pushed the clothes aside, going for the zipper on the suitcase, laughing hard as a pillow came flying out of nowhere to hit him in the back of the head. 

“Get out of my bag.”

“Worried I might unfold all your carefully folded socks?” Dean teased, picking up the pillow off the floor and tossing it back to the bed, mindful not to hit either of the dogs who were watching him intensely.

“I’m worried you’re gonna get your dirty hands all over my unmentionables.”

Dean snickered and repeated the word.

“Come here,” Nick said with an exasperated sigh.

“No. You’re gonna hit me with the pillow again.”

“Poor Dean. Afraid of a pillow,” Nick taunted, rolling his eyes. With a long suffering sigh, he reached over, pulled back the blanket and patted the space he’d made next to him. “Unless you  _ wanted  _ to sleep in your own bed… alone.” 

It felt like a trap, but Dean wasn’t the sort of person to turn down such a delicious offer. He grinned and turned off the bedroom light before doing his best not to sprint back to the bed. 

“You’re still a dork. You know that?” Nick said softly in the dark, settling in as Dean laid down beside him. 

“Dude. We’re in our thirties. You can’t use the word ‘dork’ anymore.” Dean was happy to keep on teasing, if that’s what the other man wanted. It’s what they’d been doing all day and there wasn’t a good reason to stop. 

“What else am I supposed to call someone who just skipped to my bed?”

“Did not,” Dean scoffed, aware that his small and endearing pout would be lost in the darkness. 

Nick was a warm, solid, presence beside him. 

Dean sighed softly happily, folding his arms behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. “We always end up like this. Don’t we?”

“Like what?” Nick asked, rolling on to his side.

“With me on the right side of the bed.”

“You like the left side?” One of Nick’s knees came up to butt against Dean’s thigh. “Because we can switch tomorrow night if you want.”

“But not tonight?” Dean didn’t even want to switch. He just wanted to keep talking. 

“No,” Nick shifted, his cheek coming to rest on Dean’s pillow, getting closer than necessary considering how big the bed was. “I’m already comfortable.”

Sheets and blankets whispered as both men wordlessly scooted closer to one another until their sides touched. Shoulders, to hips, to knees.

They stayed up for at least another hour, whispering to one another until there were more yawns than words being traded, and to Dean it felt like being home. 

He woke up slowly. The room dark with only the barest dusky light of pre-dawn leaking in through the blinds. It was an older house and the window had always had a draft. The air in the room was cold with that pre-winter chill and the promise of rain, but on the bed was nothing but warmth. Nick’s head was a comforting weight against Dean’s shoulder, using him as a pillow, and the man’s thigh draped over his, trapping Dean’s legs. He could smell the lovely mix of Nick’s cologne and faint sweat, and Nick’s shampoo where Nick’s hair tickled his cheek.

Rough fingers were tracing gentle, careful patterns back and forth along Dean’s side, up under his t-shirt, stirring to life butterflies as Dean’s brain slowly caught up. 

Nick was there.

Real, warm, and right beside him.

Down by his ankles, another weight shifted, and Dean opened his eyes in quiet confusion until he realised it was one of Nick’s dogs using his shin for a pillow. The dog had managed to steal most of the blanket, nesting in the folds of fabric, and leaving both humans with hardly any covers at all. 

Dean lay still, pretending to be asleep, afraid that the slightest movement would runit it all. He closed his eyes and focused on the weight of the hand resting against his stomach, the soft breath tickling the hollow of his throat, and the thigh resting just below his hip. 

Since the night after the wedding, months ago, Dean had wanted to get his friend back in bed with him. 

Not like this though. 

Not that every part of this wasn’t perfection―but he craved more. If it were anyone else, then they would have spent the majority of the day before screwing one another’s brains out. Instead, Dean was lying as still as possible, pretending to sleep, afraid that Nick would stop petting him if he moved. Anticipatory tingles were spreading through his body as he imagined what he wanted Nick’s hands to do with him. And Nick’s mouth. That beautiful fucking mouth. It had starred in far too many fantasies since the two of them had started talking over the phone months ago. 

Nick was right there.

What the hell did Dean have to lose?

His best friend. 

As much as Dean hated to pay any attention to the insecure asshold of a voice in the back of his mind, it did have a fair point. 

Thankfully, Dean had never been all that great at listening to the risk-analyzing part of his mind. He was really more of a do-or-die kind of man.

With his breath hitching, and his heart starting to race with anticipation, Dean gathered up his courage, turned his head, and kissed the crown of his friend’s head. 

Nick sucked in a small breath, tensing up, and he began to withdraw his hand as if he’d been caught doing something that he shouldn’t be.

Dean quickly put his hand over Nick's to stop him, and felt his friend relax in the darkness. 

Nick angled his face up to look at Dean. It was still too dark to properly see each other, but faint light filtering in through the window caught in Nick’s pale eyes, making them gleam. Slowly, slowly, he angled his head to press his lips against Dean’s shoulder, then looked back up as if to gauge the reaction. 

Dean let go of his friend’s hand to slowly run his fingertips up Nick’s arm. 

He turned his face down to place another kiss on Dean’s shoulder, then softly nuzzled his way upward, shifting to get higher up on the bed. Nick’s mouth reached Dean’s cheek, his breath a soft caress that tickled along stubbled skin. Dean turned his head to capture Nick’s lip, belly flip-flopping like a stranded fish, and his heart soared when Nick opened his mouth to let Dean slip his tongue in. 

For the longest time, that was all they did; trading slow caresses and lazy kisses, but inevitably, unavoidably, things started to shift as the two men began to remember where they’d left off years before.

The dog laying down by Dean’s leg started to stir, disturbed by the movement. She snorted and sat up, a silhouetted staring judgmentally at the humans before she snorted again and jumped off the bed. The click-click of her claws receded from the room and down the corridor towards the stairs and down to the living room. 

Dean barely took note of it, but Nick took it as a signal to finally situate himself between Dean’s legs, and Dean grabbed his friend’s ass in encouragement. Every little shift and movement between them sent tingles of arousal thought Dean’s body, butterflies of anticipation going rampant inside of him. Nick fisted Dean’s hair, pulling his head back to kiss and taste Dean’s throat with his tongue. 

Dean gasped, both of their breaths coming in rough puffs, sweat making their skin heated despite the chill in the room. Dean’s hands roamed, stroking Nick’s back under his shirt, feeling the strong muscles hidden under a soft layer of comfortable weight. 

The slow ascent of the sun allowed more light to filter in, painting the room in shades of gray. Dean’s head fell to one side as Nick found a sensitive spot behind his ear. Eyes only half open, he found himself looking at a second dog who was lying on its back on the other side of the space that Nick had occupied. 

The smallest awkwardness started to creep in, and he closed his eyes and turned his head to capture Nick’s lips again with his own, tasting him, rutting up against his hips like the horny teenager he’d been all those years ago when he’d first fallen in love with his best friend. 

“What about the dog?” Dean mumbled into the kisses. 

“Don’t worry about her. Pandora’s used to it,” Nick answered, mouth leaving Dean’s to kiss along the underside of his jaw, nipping lightly on a slow path to Dean’s ear.

“ _ Used to _ ?” Dean let out a startled laugh. “Woah, okay, buddy. You need to work on your dirty talk, ‘cause I’m telling you, that ― _ mmpf _ !” 

Nick silenced Dean with a rough kiss, laughing. One of his hands tugged at the hem of Dean’s boxers, and he lifted his hips to help Nick, the two of them fumbling each other's clothes off, in what had to be record time.

Just as quickly though, Nick was pulling away, sliding off the bed, and leaving Dean panting and confused. 

“Hey… hey,” was all that Dean’s brain could put together as he reached out, fingers skimming Nick’s thigh as the other man drifted out of reach. Before he had to figure out what was happening though, Nick was coming back to the bed with a bottle of lube and a packet of condoms that he’d pulled from his suitcase. 

Dean sniggered softly, trying to hide how uncharacteristically nervous he was. “Look at you. You’re just prepared for anything, ain’t ya? Like a good little soldier.”

“I’d say more like a hopeful soldier,” Nick countered with a playful note to his voice. “Hoping maybe you’d get bored.” Nick knelt on the bed, looming, and looking as good as any wet dream that Dean had ever had. 

A giggle escaped Dean, and he didn’t even fight it, grinning. “Yeah, well, I’m bored as fuck right now, you weirdo, so if you could just,” he said, making a circular get-on-with-it gesture with his hands to cover up for that ridiculous little giggle. 

More kisses, eager ones, smothered out every trace of laughter, leaving Dean breathless and wanting, but all too soon he had to turn his head away, whispering, “No. Fuck. Luci. I can’t. I can’t do it like this.”

Nick slowed his movements. Already two fingers deep into Dean, touching places he’d never touched back when they were just teenagers fooling around, he looked up. His eyes were impossibly dark, his pupils blown wide and hungry. But he stopped and whispered in a rough and uncertain way, “Oh… okay. I-I must have read you wrong―”

Dean’s laugh was almost hysteric and he cut his friend off by biting his lip. “Dude. I’ve got a dog  _ staring  _ at me. Okay? She just licked my face and this is  _ not _ the kind of threesome I wanna be havin’.”

Nick snickered and relaxed. “Never known you to be shy,” he teased before turning his head to the dog and firmly saying, “Pandora. Out.”

The dog stood, walking over Dean’s chest on her way off the bed, before obediently hopping down and trotting out the door. 

“Better?” Nick asked.

Dean grinned. “Yeah, you weirdo. I’m good.”

There were no distractions after that. Only pleasure and Nick panting into Dean’s ear. His weight perfect on top of Dean, the feel of him inside, and Nick’s words sending thrills down Dean’s spine. “I’ve wanted your goddamned, long fucking bowlegs wrapped around me since I was a teenager.”

Dean might have dropped some confessions of his own. Honestly, he was too distracted by his friend to consider what, if any, words were spilling from his own lips.

Afterwards, they lay there panting in the afterglow, both grinning stupidly at one another. Nick was so stunning and perfect in the warm light of morning and Dean felt like he could stare at his friend’s dumb face for the rest of his life and never tire of it. 

He almost blurted out something stupid. That hopeless teenager in him on the verge of begging ‘ _ Don’t leave where I can’t follow _ ’ all over again. Nick was there with him. Finally there with him. All those years wasted in heartbreak and spite. All those brief relationships falling apart because Dean could get infatuated with other people because in the end, nobody had ever managed to keep his attention like the weird son of a bitch currently pressed against his side.

He didn’t want to think about Nick having to leave again.

The room’s bathed in the warm orange glow of dawnlight. Dean spotted something and burst out laughing. “Jezus. Fuck sake.”

“What?”

Dean pointed to the threshold. Just outside of the open door, one dog was lying down, the other sitting, both of them staring at the pair on the bed. “Y’think they’ve been here the whole time?”

Nick grinned, looking far too satisfied for Dean’s taste. “Mhm. Probably.”

“Can we shut the door next time, or am I just gonna have to get used to your perverted voyeur dogs always staring at us while we fuck?”

For some reason, that question made Nick smile and look away. He sat up and grabbed the blanket at their feet then lay down pulling it over them. “Better take this now since Freja’s back. She’s a blanket hogger,” was his non-answer.

Laughing softly, Dean tucked himself closer, settling into the warmth of the blankets and the loop of his friend’s arms. They were both sweaty, and more than a little sticky, and it was perfect. 

“I fucking love you. You know that?” The words coming out of Dean like the most natural thing in the world. He almost didn’t even realise that he’d said them, until he felt his friend freeze beside him. 

“Oh,” Nick breathed, his eyes frantically searching Dean’s face, but his voice soft and steady. “No. I did not know that.”

Dean cleared his throat. “Kind of meant to keep that to myself for at least another year. Sorry.” He tried on a smile, his insides a sudden mess in light of how bad he messed up. “Sorry if that ruins the moment. We can just go and pretend I kept my goddamn mouth shut if that works for you.”

“Do you mean it?”

Dean nodded, eager to rewrite the last few seconds of his life. 

“You love me?”

He swallowed and it made a clicking sound in his throat. “Yeah. Of course I do.”

Nick looked away, a faint smile tugging the corners of his mouth. Looking back up, almost nervously, he asked, “Why?”

“Because I know you.” 

“That’s a stupid reason.” Nick chuckled, pulling his arms tighter around Dean, resting a cheek against his shoulder and whispering, “I love you too.”

Dean lay there grinning up at the ceiling, too damn happy to do anything else.

“You know,” Nick pressed a kiss into Dean’s shoulder, “when I was a kid and imagining this… it was a lot more... romantic.”

“This isn’t romantic?”

Nick chuckled, lifting his head to grin up at Dean. “No. This is absolutely  _ not _ romantic, you ass... but it’s still pretty good.”

**______________________________________________**

  
  


It was hard to let Nick leave for home at the end of that week, but at least they had their regularly scheduled phone calls each morning and night to help lessen the distance between them. There were a lot of Saturday night Skype calls and hundreds of texts each day, and Dean had no idea he could miss someone as much as he missed Nick. 

They managed to work their schedules so that they could spend Christmas together. They invaded Dean’s parent’s place and there was something very surreal about being back there with Nick, fooling around in the middle of the night, trying to keep it down so John and Mary wouldn’t catch them. 

And if it had been hard driving Nick to the airport back in autumn, it was ten times worse having to say goodbye once the winter holiday was over. 

By the time that April rolled around, Dean felt like he was losing it. He’d lay in bed for hours sometimes after hanging up his phone, staging elaborate conversations in his mind of how he could magically convince Nick to move out to Texas. Or he’d huddle around his phone in the dark of the night, browsing job openings out in Washington, and wondering why and how him and his childhood friend could have ended up with so much space between them. 

It was one of those cursing the universe, full of self loathing nights, when he was laying on his bed with the lights out as he talked with Nick. Months before he’d started putting his phone on speaker and closing his eyes during their nightly calls, because it made it easier to pretend that his friend was there with him. 

“You falling asleep?” Nick asked, his own words sounding slow and just as tired.

“I’m still here,” Dean smiled, “but I can let you go if you need to go to bed.”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? Because you’ve been yawning for the past hour.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I was just late last night… finishing packing.”

“Packing?” Dean repeated, not sure if he’d heard right. “You going somewhere?”

Nick didn’t say anything for just long enough that Dean was forced to roll onto his side and peer at his phone to make sure he hadn’t dropped the call.

“You still with me, Lu?”

“Yeah,” Nick chuckled softly, in that nervous way he did sometimes. “I’m getting transferred to a different base.”

“Please don’t tell me it’s up in like,” Dean struggled to think of anywhere that could possibly be further away than they already were, “up in Alaska or something.”

“No. God no.” He laughed. “I’d never make it up there in the snow.”

Dean chuckled too. Smiling at the voice coming from his phone and wishing he had the real thing lying beside him. “Don’t suppose you might be moving a little close to my neck of the woods? Maybe somewhere within a reasonable driving distance so I don’t have to get on a plane when I want to see you?”

“How far is reasonable for driving?”

“I wish I could tell you that any distance would be reasonable,” Dean sighed softly, aching. “If I didn’t have work almost every day, and if airplanes weren’t the work of the devil, you know I’d be out there to see you every weekend.”

“That does sound amazing,” Nick said almost wistfully, a dreamy tone coloring his words. “I do work most weekends though. How would you feel about Tuesdays and Wednesdays?”

“Sure.” Dean laughed. In this magical, hypothetical world where Nick lived close by and things weren't complicated, then he absolutely could switch his schedule around for the man he was in love with. Changing up his day planner was literally the least difficult part of this magical ‘maybe’ they were talking about. 

“I know it’s a little short notice, but what are you doing this Wednesday?” 

“Clinic hours, and then staying up late talking to my boyfriend?”

“That does sound like a full and exciting day ahead of you,” Nick chuckled, that hint of nervousness sneaking in again. “So I guess you wouldn’t be free to come out to Fort Worth and help me unpack?”

Dean sat up, eyes going round as hope and uncertainty battered his insides. “Fort Worth?”

“Fort Worth,” Nick repeated.

“ _ Fort Worth _ ?” Dean needed to hear it again. “Half hour drive from my house, Fort Worth Air Force Base? That one?”

Laughter was the only thing coming through the phone. 

Grinning like the love sick idiot he was, Dean fell back in bed with a  _ whump _ of breath. “Really? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I put in a request for transfer only a week ago. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything about it for at least three months, and I wasn’t sure they were going to accept it; and then I wasn’t sure you’d even want me living that close.”

“Nick!” No amount of love for his friend could keep Dean from feeling frustrated at Nick’s intentionally difficult tendencies. It’s how the man had always been, even back when they were just little kids. Though he couldn’t see Nick, Dean could imagine the other man’s smile all those thousands of miles away. “You won’t be living close enough to me until the day that we start keeping our toothbrushes in the same cup.”

Chuckling, Nick obviously had no idea how very serious Dean was.

Within months though, he got his wish, Nick’s toothbrush beside his and Nick’s dumb face peeking up at him from the pillow beside his own every morning. 

There would always be the old scars left behind from those long years of misunderstanding between them, small uncertainties and occasional needs for reassurance, arguments that ended with both men angrily yelling ‘ _ I love you _ ’ because once they had matching rings they agreed never to go to bed without telling eachother those three infuriating words. 

And Dean always meant it. 

Even on his worst days, he’d look at the man he’d grown up with, and feel the weight of gold on his left hand, and not know how the hell two stupid teenagers had managed to grow into two stupid adults who only fell more in love with one another as the years went on.

And Dean knew that he would always mean it. 


End file.
